
Ronlc -K^ 



Cojy!ight¥"__illla. 



SIDEYRIGHT DEPOSm 




MAP OF KOREA. 



THE 
TRUTH ABOUT KOREA 



By 

CARLTON WALDO KENDALL 

(Delegate to the International Peace Conference, 1915) 



SECOND EDITION 

ooo 



Published by 
THE KOREAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 

San Francisco, California 
July, 1919 



.K4- 



Copyright, 1919, 

by 

The Korean National Association 



"©C.LA5K5 2 04 
OCT bs^- 



This volume is dedicated 

to the men and TDomen of Korea 

who have so heroically given their lives 

that Freedom and Liberty may he 

the inherent birth-right 

of their posterity. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

Foreword 7 

General Information About Korea 9 

The Seizure of Korea 11 

Japanese Autocratic Rule 15 

Administration and 'Reforms' 16 

Economic Oppression 17 

Religious Oppression 19 

The Double Standard 20 

The Independence Movement 24 

The Preparations 25 

The Opening Demonstration 27 

The Japanese Police 30 

Atrocities and Massacres 31 

The New Republic 34 

Statements and Press Reports 37 

Official Documents and Proclamations 47 

Declaration of Independence 49 

Aims and Aspirations 53 

Provisional Constitution 55 

Official Proclamation 57 

Petition to the Peace Conference 59 

Memorandum to the Peace Conference.... 71 

Appendices 95 

Bibliography , 103 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Map of Korea Frontispiece 

The Dai Dong River 1 /^ •. m 

. . • Ti/r- f Opposite page 18 

An American Mine j 



Soldiers Guarding Pagoda Park j ,, ^^ 



1 

The Opening Demonstration j 

Japanese Atrocities " " 59 



FOREWORD 

In presenting this volume, it is not my purpose to create a 
feeling of hostility against the Japanese people. I cannot be- 
lieve that the kindly men and women of Japan approve the 
unnamable cruelties taking place today in Korea. Where I 
have used the term Japan or Japanese in connection with the 
Korean situation, I refer not to the Japanese people — the 
wives and daughters, husbands and sons of the Flowery 
Kingdom — but to that spirit of Military Autocracy which knows 
no conscience, no human regard nor tolerance, and crushes 
all who oppose it beneath the insatiable wrath of its iron heel. 

It is that spirit which, while serving as a soldier in the 
United States Army, I took an oath to crush and to which 
end the remainder of my life is dedicated. 

You who read this volume may feel that the people of 
Korea and the Orient have no common tie with the people of 
America and Europe, and that therefore we should not con- 
cern ourselves with their affairs. It is true that they are of a 
different nationality and a different race. But today, above 
all nationalities and all races, is a common tie — Justice and 
Humanity. And it is in the name of Justice and Humanity 
that I present this volume for your consideration, as a plea 
for the right of twenty million human beings to enjoy their 
personal freedom and liberty. 

C. W. Kendall. 

Oakland, California, June 17, 1919. 



The world can he at peace only if its life is stable, and 
there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where 
there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of 
freedom, and of right. — Woodrow Wilson. 



GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT 
KOREA 

Korea is a "buffer" state. In the Orient she occupies a 
position analogous to Belgium in Europe. She is one o£ the 
oldest countries in existence. The exact date of her birth as a 
nation is unknown, probably about 2,000 B. C. Like Belgium, 
she is a country with a separate and distinct language, liter- 
ature and customs. 

In her early history, she was instrumental in spreading the 
Chinese culture from China to Japan. Amongst her most 
notable achievements was the early use of movable set type 
and the invention of the first iron-clad war vessel. 

The country is somev/hat the shape of Italy. It is a rich 
peninsula, extending out from the mainland of Asia, bounded 
on three sides by the sea and on the north by Manchuria 
and the Russian Maritime Province. Its 1,700-mile sea coast 
is rugged and dotted with many mountainous islands and good 
harbors. The largest port is Fusan, one hundred and sixty- 
three miles by water from Nagasaki, Japan, and a thriving 
commercial city with over a hundred thousand population. 
Korea is about twice the size of New York State. 

In climate and density of population it is closely akin to 
the eastern United States. The principal industries are min- 
ing, agriculture and the catching of sea foods. Much of the 
mining is in the hands of foreigners. Formerly large con- 
cessions were granted to Americans, but of late years, as 
the leases expire, they have gradually been taken over by 
Japanese. The country is rich in undeveloped natural re- 
sources. 

Rich, fertile river valleys, together with an abundance 
of salt-water fish, make Korea amply able to support its 
population of twenty million people. The number of foreign- 
ers in the country is constantly on the increase. At the 
present time there are over three hundred and fifty thousand 
Japanese. The other nationalities represented are, according 



10 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

to the census of 1914: 16,882 Chinese, 687 Americans, 230 
English, 97 French, 53 Germans and 14 Russians. Prac- 
tically all the Americans in the country are either mission- 
aries or engaged in mining. 

The capital city is Seoul, with a population of close to 
three hundred thousand people. For centuries Korea was a 
free nation and ruled itself. But in the last few decades, as 
the Orient awakened from its slumbering lethargy, the little 
nation became the pawn in the struggle for Asiatic su- 
premacy. 

Like Belgium, Korea is situated between three great 
powers, each one ambitious to be the greatest — the Mistress of 
the Orient — so that in recent years the country and its people 
have been subject to a long succession of invasions. China, 
Russia and Japan have each had their turn at claiming a 
suzerainty over the country. But the latter, Japan, becoming 
more powerful in the Orient than the other two, could not 
resist the temptation to prey upon the little, helpless nation 
at her mercy, in order to be forever sure of the balance of 
power. 



THE SEIZURE OF KOREA 

At the opening of the Russo-Japanece war, Japan made a 
treaty with Korea in which she solemnly vowed to guarantee 
the independence of the "Hermit Kingdom," as it was then 
called. In return, Korea opened the country to Japan as a 
basis for her military operations against Russia and gave 
her material aid in the way of raw supplies. In doing this she 
ran the risk of devastation and seizure in case her ally was 
defeated. 

But no sooner were Japanese arms proclaimed victorious 
than Japan began her first insidious operations to deliber- 
ately violate the terms of the treaty. To do it openly would 
have robbed her of the moral prestige as a coming great 
power. She therefore determined to make Korea ask to 
give up her independence and come under the suzerainty of 
Japan. So as soon as the treaty of peace was signed at 
Portsmouth, she forwarded to the Emperor of Korea a note 
to that effect. But the Emperor of Korea, foreseeing what 
would happen to his country and its people, determined to do 
all in his power to prevent such a catastrophe. His only 
hope was America. 

In 1882 Korea and the United States had concluded a 
treaty in which they had mutually agreed to help each other 
in case of oppressive treatment by an outside power. So, in 
view of this treaty, he sent a personal note to the President 
of the United States asking his assistance. But before the 
note was fairly on its way, a Japanese spy on board the vessel 
discovered it and notified the government in Tokio the exact 
hour it would arrive in Washington. 

Immediately Marquis Ito was dispatched to Seoul, with 
instructions to make Korea agree to a Japanese suzerainty. 
He arrived and after numerous conferences realized that 
Korea was determined to stand firm on the treaty of 1904, in 
which Japan had guaranteed her independence. 



12 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

In the meantime, the date set for the arrival of the Em- 
peror's note in Washington was rapidly approaching. It was 
now or never. On November 17, 1905 — a little over two 
months and a half after the close of the war — the Marquis 
called a conference of the Korean Cabinet in the audience 
chamber of the Emperor. 

During the week preceding this conference, the Japanese 
troops stationed at the capital had been making a great dis- 
play of military force around the palace. They were equipped 
with field guns and the men were fully armed. They did 
everything short of actual violence to demonstrate to the 
Koreans the military prowess of Japan. 

To the Cabinet Ministers and to the Emperor, all this 
display had a sinister and terrible meaning, for in 1895, under 
very similar circumstances, the Queen of Korea, who was 
opposed to Japanese rule, was barbarously murdered and 
her body burned in kerosene. 

F.A. McKenzie, the British journalist, who was in Korea 
at the time, gives the following vivid account of what took 
place : 

"That evening Japanese soldiers, with fixed bayonets, en- 
tered the courtyard of the palace and stood near the apart- 
ment of the Emperor. Marquis Ito now arrived, accompanied 
by General Hasegawa, commander of the Japanese Army in 
Korea. 

"The Marquis demanded an audience of the Emperor. 
The Emperor refused to grant it, saying that his throat was 
very bad and he was in great pain. The Marquis then made 
his way into the Emperor's presence and personally requested 
an audience. The Emperor still refused. 'Please go away 
and discuss the matter with the Cabinet Ministers,' he said. 

"Thereupon, Marquis Ito went outside to the Ministers. 
'Your Emperor has commanded you to confer with me and 
settle this matter,' he declared. 

"The acting Prime Minister, Han Kew Sul, jumped to 
his feet and said he would go and tell the Emperor of the 



THE SEIZURE OF KOREA. 13 

talk of traitors. Han Kew Sul was allowed to leave the 
room and then was gripped by the Japanese Secretary of the 
Legation, thrown into a sideroom, and threatened with death. 
Even Marquis Ito went out to him to persuade him. 'Would 
3^ou not yield,' the Marquis said, 'if your Emperor com- 
manded you?' 'No,' said Han Kew Sul, 'not even then!' 

"This was enough. The Marquis at once went to the Em- 
peror. 'Han Kew Sul is a traitor,' he said. 'He defies you, 
and declares that he will not obey your commands.' 

"Meanwhile the remaining Cabinet Ministers waited in 
the Cabinet chamber. Where was their leader, the man who 
had urged them all to resist to the death? Minute after min- 
ute passed, and still he did not return. Then a whisper went 
around that the Japanese had killed him. The harsh voices of 
the Japanese grew still more strident. Courtesy and restraint 
were thrown off. 'Agree v/ith us and be rich; or oppose us 
and perish.' 

"In the early hours of the morning commands were issued 
that the seal of State should be brought from the Foreign 
Minister's apartment, and a treaty should be signed. Here 
another difficulty arose. The custodian of the seal had re- 
ceived orders in advance that, even if his master commanded, 
the seal was not to be surrendered for any such purpose. 
When telephonic orders were sent to him he refused to bring 
the seal along, and special messengers had to be dispatched to 
take it from him by force." 

In this way Japan negotiated the treaty with Korea. Be- 
fore the Emperor's note reached the President of the United 
States, she announced to the world that Korea had "volun- 
tarily" become a protectorate of the Japanese Government 
and that all future diplomatic business would be conducted 
through the Japanese Embassy. 

Five years later, in 1910, she concluded another treaty with 
the new Emperor of Korea, who was known to be mentally 
incapacitated from birth, and induced him to sign the country 
over completely. It then became a part of the Japanese na- 
tion — comprising about one-third of the whole empire. 



14 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Whether or not a single feeble-minded individual possessed 
the right to sign over a nation and the lives and future lives, 
of twenty million people is for the reader to decide. At any 
rate, from that time on Korea came under the autocratic ad- 
ministration of the Japanese Empire. 



JAPANESE AUTOCRATIC RULE 

The nine years following the egregious annexation has 
been one of the most shameful pages in the history of the 
Japanese Empire. The heinous crimes committed by Japanese 
Military Autocracy have been carefully hidden from the world 
until the last few months. 

The casual traveler visiting Korea has been shown only 
the more beautiful aspects of the country: the Japanese 
achievements, the material progress, the beautiful government 
museum in Seoul. The legalized robbery, the browbeating, 
the introduction of licensed public prostitution, the tortures 
in the prisons, the unnamable oppression and injustice — all 
these have been hidden from his gaze. He is told in his 
Japanese Railway Guidebook and traveler's pocket volumes 
how Japan — Japan the Magnificent Mistress of the Orient — 
has extended to Korea her brotherly love and assistance and 
is dragging from the depths of poverty, crime and immorality, 
the ignorant, worthless Koreans and striving to raise them to 
the level of her own glorious culture. 

American correspondents, coming to the country, have been 
royally entertained, and — I am ashamed to say — bought up 
by the Japanese Governor-General, with the result that they 
have returned and written on the glories of Japanese reforms 
in Korea. For the consumption of Americans and Europeans 
there, the Governor-General has a subsidized organ, the Seoul 
Press, which is a daily English newspaper published to satisfy 
the Occidental desire for news and to disseminate the kind 
of news Japan wishes to make public. 

For scholars, she prepared a well-illustrated volume and 
sent it gratis to all great men and Important libraries in 
America and Great Britain. It is entitled the 'Annual Re- 
port of Reforms and Progress in Chosen". In it she pictures 
vividly the "contentment and prosperity" that Japanese rule is 
bringing to the Koreans. Germany, at her cleverest, could not 
hold a candle to Japan when it came to "pulling the wool" 



16 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

over the eyes of the Occident in regard to actual conditions 
under her autocratic rule. 

Administration and "Reforms" 

In the administration of Korea, Japan has done some 
things, in a material way, for the good of the country, such 
as constructing public buildings, introducing improvements in 
agriculture and extending the means of ^communication. But, 
as with Germany's administration of Belgium, over and above 
these material accomplishments she has introduced all the 
heinousness of Militarism. 

As soon as Korea was annexed Japan began Japanizing 
the country. She put the government under military juris- 
diction and appointed a Military Governor-General, who was 
given virtually all the powers of a Czar. Then, through him, 
she began to instigate a series of so-called "reforms". 

One of the first of these "reforms" was to go through all 
the public archives and private libraries and systematically 
collect and burn Korean works of literature and histor}^ 
Then she passed laws which completely stamped out all 
Korean periodical literature — from local newspapers to scien- 
tific journals. The only non- Japanese publications in Korea 
today are certain newspapers, published secretly and dis- 
tributed from hand to hand like the famous Belgian news- 
papers. The type and hand presses are carried from place to 
place and the lives of the editors are as thrilling as the 
Japanese police can make them. 

In addition to destroying the literature of Korea, priceless 
art treasures and historical objects have been lost to the 
world through needless vandalism. 

Another of these "reforms" was an attempt to destroy 
the Korean language by making Japanese the official tongue, 
not only in public documents, but also in the schools. All text- 
books were printed in Japanese under official Japanese super- 
vision. The teachers were and are Japanese or Japanese- 
speaking Koreans. 

Not only have the Japanese forbidden the Koreans to be 



JAPANESE AUTOCRATIC RULE. 17 

instructed in their own language, but they have instigated a 
series of educational regulations — under the pretext of uni- 
fying the educational system and bringing it up to a higher 
standard — which limit the amount of education a Korean can 
pursue. Religious services and the teaching of geography 
are forbidden in all the schools. Japanese history alone is 
permitted. All Korean and Western world histories are 
forbidden. 

Korean scholars are not permitted to leave the country 
and go abroad for study, save to Japan. Here the students, 
under government supervision, are not allowed to specialize 
in such subjects as law, history or economics in the Imperial 
University of Tokyo. They are strongly advised to attend 
commercial or trade schools and are insidiously discriminated 
against in the higher institutions. 

Under the guise of "educational reforms", a systematic 
attempt has been made to keep the Korean students in 
ignorance of the advantages of democracy and to hold them 
down mentally under the heel of Japanese Military Autocracy, 
so that the coming generation would be ignorant of the funda- 
mentals of a just government and robbed of any possible 
leaders. 

Economic Oppression 

The oppression of Korea has not been confined to lan- 
guage and education alone. An economic oppression was in- 
augurated which has already brought ruin to thousands of 
Korean merchants and landholders. Although, statistically, 
the total wealth of the country has increased since Japanese 
occupation, the figures are due to the decrease in the buying 
value of money. Today the economic status of the Koreans 
is worse than it was under the old administration. Since 
the seizure of the country, over one million five hundred thou- 
sand Koreans have emigrated to China and Siberia, primarily 
because they could not stand the economic pressure brought 
to bear upon them by their conquerors. 



18 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Under the old Korean Government before annexation, 
the land was divided into four classes : 

1. Private lands, owned by private individuals. 

2. Royal lands, belonging to the king, but leased in 
perpetuity to private individuals, with the right of selling to 
another individual without changing the ownership and the 
privilege of inheritance. 

3. Municipal lands, the titles of which belonged to the 
various municipalities, but the practical ownership of which 
was in the hands of private individuals. 

4. Lands belonging to Buddhist Temples. 

Owners of private lands paid taxes to the government; 
holders of royal lands paid tribute to the royal household; 
the ovv^ners of municipal lands paid fees to the respective 
municipalities which held the title of the lands, and the lands 
belonging to Buddhist Temples were free from taxation. These 
temple lands were held in communistic plan amongst the 
Buddhists. 

One of the first deeds of the Japanese was to survey the 
country and confiscate all lands belonging to the royal house- 
hold, to the municipalities and to the Buddhist Temples. They 
explained this act on the technical ground that since these 
lands did not belong to private individuals, they must be 
the property of the government. The Korean owners were 
dispossessed and driven out without remuneration and the 
land was leased or sold to Japanese farmers. In some cases 
where Koreans protested against the seizure, they were fast- 
ened to crude wooden crosses and shot. 

Under the direction of the Japanese Government, the Ori- 
ental Colonization Company was organized to promote Japa- 
nese colonization of Korea and thus further Japanize the 
country. To induce emigrants to invade the peninsula, this 
company offered every Japanese settler free transportation 
to Korea and provided him with a home and a piece of land, 
to be paid for in three or four years. The plan in theory is 
identical with Bismarck's idea for Prussianizing Poland. 

Another method by which the Japanese gained possession 




(upper) the DAI DONG RIVER NEAR PYENG YANG, WITH BUDDHIST TEMPLES IN 

THE FOREGROUND. 

(lower) a large AMERICAN MINE IN SOUTHERN KOREA. 



JAPANESE AUTOCRATIC RULE. 19 

of land was to force the Korean owners to sell at a ridicu- 
lously low figure. Rice is the chief agricultural product in 
Korea and the water, irrigating the rice fields, runs from one 
field to another in succession. The agents for the Oriental 
Colonization Company buy the rice patch through which the 
water runs to the desired piece of land. Then Japanese agents 
or "farmers" cut off the water supply, and the Korean owner, 
after vain protests, is finally forced to sell his now worthless 
land to the Oriental Colonization Company at their own figure 
or remain on it and starve. 

Already one-third of the best land in Korea is in the 
hands of the Japanese. 

Religious Oppression 

In regard to religious matters : From the very first they 
have played a most important part. In 1912 — two years after 
the annexation — Count Terauchi, the Governor-General, in- 
stituted what is known as the "persecution of the Korean 
Church". 

Prominent churchmen, leaders in Korean thought 
and education, were charged with conspiracy and put 
in prison. American missionaries were dragged into 
the trial, accused of being connected with a plot to 
assassinate the Governor-General. The case attracted 
world-wide attention and protest. The Japanese pre- 
pared ready-made confessions and after secret tortures, 
the prisoners signed these confessions. In open court, 
however, under the protection of foreign opinion, the 
prisoners denied their confessions and upon investiga- 
tion the confessions were found to be absolutely false. 
The case was known as the famous "Conspiracy Trial" 
and was the first time the civilized world penetrated 
beneath the veil of Japanese censorship and propaganda, 
and saw with horrified eyes the true conditions in Korea. 

The absurdity of some of the charges against Korean 
Christians is well illustrated by the case of Pastor Kil 
of Ping Yang. He was charged with treason for 



20 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

preaching against the evil of cigarette-smoking amongst 
boys. The analysis of the charge is a masterpiece for 
Jevons' Logic. It is as follows: 

Pastor Kil preached against the use of cigarettes. 

Cigarette manufacture is a government monopoly. 

To speak against their use is to injure a government 
institution. 

To injure a government institution is to work against 
the government. 

To work against the government is treason. 

Therefore Pastor Kil is guilty of treason. 

This is but an example of the working of the Jap- 
anese courts in Korea. 

Religious gatherings of more than five persons are 
required to obtain a permit from the government, and 
Christians are compelled to secure a special certificate 
permitting them to practice their religion. Such hymns 
as "Onward, Christian Soldiers," are not permitted to be 
sung on the presumption that they stimulate nationalism 
amongst the Koreans. Spies and detectives attend every 
large church gathering as well as the ordinary Sunday 
services. 

At the present time, the foreign missionary force 
in Korea numbers about three hundred, with the Ameri- 
can Presbyterian, Methodist and Catholic churches es- 
pecially influential. The missionaries are practical, hard- 
working men and women and include all creeds — both 
Catholic and Protestant. They have opened hospitals 
and schools as well as churches and missions. 

The Double Standard 

The social, intellectual, moral and economic life of 
Korea is divided into two classes: one for Japanese 
and one for Koreans. 

From the first, political favoritism and discrimination 
were installed. Socially, the Korean is the butt of 
Japanese scorn and ridicule and is lorded over and 



JAPANESE AUTOCRATIC RULE. 21 

humiliated whenever the opportunity presents itself. 
Never for a moment is he allowed to feel that he be- 
longs to anything but an inferior race — a scum on the 
dregs of Oriental civilization. 

From the princes of the Korean Royal Household 
to the lowest coolie every man, woman and child, in 
whose veins runs the proud blood of old Korea, is 
treated with a condescension which is an insult to 
humxanity. They are man-handled for innocently trans- 
gressing the slightest government regulation. They are 
elbowed off the sidewalks, spat upon, and taken as the 
lawful prey of Japanese loan sharks and speculators. 
If a Korean has to mortgage his property or borrow 
money, the Japanese speculators charge him as high, as 
70 per cent per annum. 

Everywhere the Double Standard is in vogue. The 
Koreans and Japanese are punished by two entirely 
different sets of laws. If a Japanese is arrested and 
convicted of a minor offense, he is fined. If a Korean 
is arrested and convicted of the same offense, he is 
given twenty or thirty lashes on his naked body until 
he is often beaten into insensibility. In the Japanese 
prisons today this barbaric custom of the Middle Ages — 
beating and flogging — is still used when dealing with 
Korean prisoners, even, according to reports, applied 
to old men and delicate girls and women. Not only 
beating and flogging, but torture and mistreatment in 
order to force confessions have been proven from time 
to time. The methods of torture used by the Japanese 
are said to be similar to the "rack" of the Middle Ages, 
putting the victim in the greatest misery and still leav- 
ing no visible marks upon his body — stretching the 
nerves and sinews and often causing total or partial 
paralysis. 

Since the Japanese seizure of Korea, crime has been 
steadily on the increase. In 1911, there were 7,342 
Korean convicts. And in 1915, according to the Jap- 



22 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

anese statistics there were 14,411 — almost double the num- 
ber. One of the reasons for this doubling of convicts is 
to be found in the system of Japanese justice under the 
Double Standard. 

A Korean is tried before a Japanese court, whose 
officials and judge are minions of the military autocracy. 
The justice he receives is the justice of the conqueror 
to the conquered. In 1915, the records of the summary 
courts — ^which correspond to our police courts — show 
only seven persons acquitted out of a total of 59,483 
cases and only forty proven innocent. These courts 
handle minor offenses and the violation of administrative 
ordinances. 

The Double Standard extends to government posi- 
tions as well as to justice. The so-called Korean 
Mayors are only figureheads in the Japanese policy of 
"pulling the wool" over the eyes of the world. They 
are all required to employ a Japanese "advisor" or 
secretary, who tells them what to do and where to 
sign their names. These advisors are the de facto 
Mayors. They are paid, on an average, about twice the 
salary of the Mayor. For instance, the "advisor" of a 
certain Korean Mayor receiving 70 yen''' a month is 
paid 150 yen for his services. 

In a similar way every wealthy Korean is required 
to employ a Japanese steward. The Japanese steward 
keeps account of the Korean's income and expenditures 
and the capitalist cannot spend a single cent without 
his knowledge and sanction. This steward is backed by 
government authority. If a wealthy Korean spends any 
significant sum of money without the sanction of his 
Japanese steward, his property is liable to confiscation 
on the charge that he may be working against the 
government. For the same reason, no Korean is per- 
mitted to draw from a bank in Korea more than $500 



*A yen is equal to fifty cents. 



JAPANESE AUTOCRATIC RULE. 23 

at a time. This works a severe hardship on the Korean 
merchant and gives the Japanese competitor a decided 
advantage in all cash transactions. 

Another example of the Double Standard is the scale 
of wages paid laborers and skilled workmen. A Japanese 
common laborer receives over half again as much as a 
Korean laborer. The other wages are as follows: 



Japanese. Koreans. 

Stone Mason 1.96 yen per day 1.02 yen per day 

Plasterer 1.54 " 

Carpenter 1.44 " 

Bricklayer 1.40 " 

Blacksmith 1.20 " 

Compositor 80 " 

Brewer (incl. board) . 16.00 " 



96 

1.00 " " " 

1.00 " " " 

.60 " " " 

45 " " " 

mo. 7'.00 " " mo. 



The full extent to which the Double Standard has 
been practised will probably never be known. As far as 
possible, Japan has endeavored to keep it hidden from 
the eyes of the world. Like Germany repressed the 
truth about her rule in Belgium, Japanese Autocracy 
has issued misleading statements and repeated denials. 
The unutterable things they have done; the trickery and 
cunning, the secret discrimination, the mockery and 
double-dealing — all these have been carefully concealed 
from the world and especially from the justice-loving 
Americans and Europeans. 

Probably no one can ever realize the untold suffering 
and heartaches caused by the nine years of Japanese 
rule and oppression. The misery and degradation, the 
sorrow and death, inflicted by Japanese Military Autoc- 
racy in Korea is too terrible and shameful a thing to 
dwell upon. The true awfulness of it will never be 
known — like the horrors in Armenia, Serbia and the 
conquered districts of Belgium and France. 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT 

The Independence Movement in Korea is not a 
new thing. It began fourteen years ago, just after 
Japan had forced the Korean Cabinet to grant her a 
suzerainty and had stepped in to rule the people a contre 
coeur. 

Many of the Korean leaders, seeing the futility of 
doing anything at that time to free their people from 
the powerful Military Autocracy whose yoke was already 
upon their necks, fled to foreign countries. Others who 
had tried, in the last desperate moments, to save their 
country and had failed were forced to seek safety in 
America and China. Gradually these refugees and 
patriots came together and organized associations, each 
member of which dedicated the remainder of his life 
to free the people at home from the hand of Japanese 
oppression. These associations were, for the most part, 
composed of Korean scholars and graduates from Amer- 
ican universities and preparatory schools. They were 
not, as charged by the Japanese Government, composed 
of rabid radicals, disgruntled politicians, or Bolsheviki. 

At the same time, societies with a similar purpose 
were organized in Korea in spite of the rigid Japanese 
spy system. The largest of these, the Chun Do Kyo, 
or "Heaven Worshipers," was encouraged by the Jap- 
anese authorities themselves. It was organized as a 
religious cult — supposedly opposed to Christianity — 
whose teachings were a combination of Buddhism, Tail- 
ism, ancestral worship and Korean superstition. In 
reality, it Was a great political club whose members 
numbered over three million patriotic Koreans. 

Quietly and with careful deliberation they prepared 
for the day when they could strike. 

Then along came the European War and President 
Wilson's famous statement in his address to the Senate 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. 25 

in 1917 that "... henceforth inviolable security of 
life, of worship, and of industrial and social develop- 
ment should be guaranteed to all peoples who have 
lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted 
to a faith and purpose hostile to their own . . ." 

The time to strike had come. When the Peace Con- 
ference, with its ideals of "self-determination," met in 
Paris, it gave to the oppressed Koreans the longed-for 
chance to place their problem before the world. So, at 
the opening of 1919, these exiled patriots went secretly 
to Korea and, in conjunction with the secret societies 
there, organized committees to begin the movement for 
re-establishing their independence. 

Their work was quiet and effective. Their plan was 
to begin a "Passive Revolution". No one, not even the 
Japanese, was to be harmed. No property was to be 
destroyed or injured. No radicalism, no I. W. W.-ism, 
no Bolshevism was to be tolerated or associated in any 
way with the movement. But a persistent passive agita- 
tion was to be instituted and continued until success 
attended their object — freedom from Japanese Military 
Autocracy. 

The Preparations 

In the latter part of January, an event occurred 
which brought things to a head. The old ex-Emperor Yi 
passed away in his palace at Seoul. The circumstances 
of his death were very peculiar, which led to a report 
getting out among the people that he had committed 
suicide in order to prevent the consummation of the 
marriage of his son, Prince Kon, to the Japanese Prin- 
cess Nashinoto. This wedding had been fixed for about 
January 29th — one week after the death of the ex- 
Emperor. 

The Prince had formerly been engaged to a Korean 
girl, but this engagement was forcibly broken off when 
the Prince was taken to Japan some years ago. The 



26 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

father of this girl is said to have died at almost the 
same time and under the very same peculiar conditions 
attending the ex-Emperor's death — so-called apoplexy — 
and again it wias reported that suicide had been the 
real cause of death. These circumstances powerfully 
affected the people throughout the whole country, and 
the old ex-Emperor was greatly glorified and worshiped. 

Therefore, it was determined to begin the demonstration 
on the date of his funeral, March 4th — for other reasons as 
well. A rigid spy system had been put in operation by the 
Japanese authorities. Under this system every Korean was 
registered like a criminal and given a number which was 
known to the police. Whenever a Korean left his home 
village or town, he was required to register at the police 
station, stating his reason for traveling and where he in- 
tended to go. The general plan was to make Seoul the 
center of activities, inasmuch as the foreign legations were 
there and the whole purpose of the movement was designed 
to gain recognition and publicity. A sudden influx of 
Koreans into Seoul, with no apparent cause, would imme- 
diately create suspicion on the part of the Japanese pohce. 
If, however, the country people came into the capitol to 
attend the ex-Emperor's funeral, no suspicion would be 
aroused. For this reason, as well as the other, March 4th 
was decided upon by the leaders. 

In some way the news leaked out to the police author- 
ities. But the Japanese police force and spy system were 
made up of a large number of native Koreans who the 
Japanese thought they had won over as their own tools. In 
reality these Koreans had slowly been creeping into the posi- 
tions of policemen, stool-pigeons and gendarmes in order to 
be ready for the day their people were to strike against the 
hated Japanese. No sooner had the Japanese authorities 
been notified of the proposed demonstrations than they 
issued orders to these "supposed" Japanized detectives to 
get busy. These loyal Koreans immediately notified the 
leaders, who, with but a few days before them, suddenly 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. 27 

changed the date to Saturday, March 1st— the day for the 
rehearsal of the funeral. 

The rehearsal for a Korean funeral is almost as mag- 
nificent as the event itself; so the sudden influx of Koreans 
into Seoul at the rate of five thousand a day to witness 
the rehearsal was nothing extraordinary. In the meantime, 
the most prominent representatives of all classes, religions 
and sects had drawn up a Declaration of Independence and 
signed it. Copies of this, as well as instructions as to what 
was expected of the people, were sent to the local leaders 
all over Korea through the aid of loyal little schoolgirls 
who hid them in their capacious sleeves and trudged from 
town to town, bringing the messages of freedom. 

It was arranged for passive demonstrations to break out 
simultaneously in all the large cities and towns in the pen- 
insula; also in Tokio, Shanghai and various other cities in 
Japan, China, Manchuria, Russia, the United States and 
other countries. 

In Seoul itself the people were to divide into groups of 
three thousand each — each group under a leader — and to 
march to different consulates and government offices, singing 
Korean national airs and shouting "Mansai," which is the 
Korean for "Hurrah." They were not to resist the Japanese 
Police. If the3^ were beaten, imprisoned or even killed they 
were to take their punishment without complaint, and to do 
nothing which would bring reproach upon the name of 
Korea or their movement. 

The Opening Demonstration 

The night before the demonstration was to begin, twenty- 
nine of the thirty-three signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence gathered in Seoul. After a meeting in which 
final arrangements were checked up and the proclamation 
read aloud for the first time, they all adjourned to a promi- 
nent restaurant for a last dinner together. It was one of the 
most singular banquets ever held in the history of any 



28 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

nation. Each man present realized that as soon as the 
proclamation, bearing his signature, was in the hands of the 
Japanese authorities he would be hunted down and executed 
or thrown into prison. All of them were acquainted with 
the eflficiency and methods of the Japanese spy system. 
They knew that to attempt to escape would be useless. 
So when the banquet was completed and the last toast 
spoken they went to the telephone, called up the Japanese 
police, told them what they had done and that they were 
ready to go to prison. Then consecrating their lives to the 
freedom of Korea, they calmly awaited the arrival of the 
government authorities. No resistance was offered when 
the police arrived. They were bundled into automobiles and 
taken away to prison. One of the signers, having arrived 
too late to participate in the meeting and dinner, went di- 
rectly to the prison and asked to be treated the same as 
the others. 

The next day, March 1st, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 
the Independence Movement began simultaneously in every 
large city in Korea. At the appointed hour the people gath- 
ered at a previously designated place to attend the meetings 
preceding the demonstrations. What happened at these 
meetings is best told by an American missionary who wit- 
nessed the one at Pyeng Yang, the old capitol of Korea. 

It is as follows : 

"March 1 : There has been considered suppressed excite- 
ment for some days among the Koreans, and we had various 
rumors that something important was going to take place. 
Dr. Moffett, Mr. Holkcrott and myself decided to attend the 
local meeting and see for ourselves what was going on. 
We found the courtyard full of people. The pupils of all 
our church schools were there and also many from the gov- 
ernment schools. 

"In front of the entrance to the building was erected a 
speakers' stand and around and back of this were seated 
several of the (Korean) pastors and officers of the Presby- 
terian churches of the city. Rev. Kim Sundu, pastor of 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. 29 

the Fifth Church and moderator of the general assembly, 
was speaking when I entered. Pastor Kang Kyu-Chan of 
the Fourth Church had already spoken, reviewing the life 
history of the late Emperor. After Kin Sundu had finished 
speaking he requested the people to remain seated, as there 
were other things to be done. 

"After the benediction had been pronounced Kim Sundu 
proceeded to read what was virtually a Declaration of Inde- 
pendence of the Korean people. After he had finished an- 
other man took the floor and explained what the people were 
expected to do, saying that nothing of an unlawful nature 
was to be permitted, but that the people were to follow the 
instructions given and make no resistance to the authorities 
or attack the Japanese people or ojEficials. 

"Kang Kyu-Chan then addressed the people relative to 
independence. When he had finished some men came out 
of the building bearing armloads of small Korean flags, 
which were passed out to the people. A large Korean flag 
was then fastened to the wall back of the speakers' stands 
and then the crowd went wild, shouting 'Mansai' and waving 
flags. It was then explained to them that they were to all 
form in procession and parade the streets waving flags and 
saying nothing but 'Mansai, Mansai.' " 

After these preliminary meetings the people formed in 
parades, headed by their local leaders, and, waving flags and 
shouting, marched through the streets. In the new capitol, 
Seoul, students of the colleges, high schools and primary 
schools, numbering several thousand, and all clad in the 
spotless white of the Korean costume, gathered at Pagoda 
Park. From here, after their meeting, they marched through 
the main streets to the public square, where they divided 
into the groups of three thousand each, as prearranged, and 
went to the foreign consulate buildings. The various consuls 
appeared and greeted them. 

From its incipiency, the demonstration, taken as a whole, 
followed the instructions of the leaders to the letter. It was 
"passive" in all its aspects. The people were unarmed and 



30 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

the parades were composed of old men and women, as well 
as young men and students. They simply jammed through 
the streets singing the Korean National Anthem, which is 
set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," waving flags and 
shouting. Foreigners who witnessed the demonstrations say 
they were one of the most singular sights they have ever 
seen. The great white-clad crowds, surging and pulsating 
with the reawakaned freedom, surrounded on all sides by the 
very Japanese who had inflicted upon them unnameable tor- 
tures and depredations — and yet, when at last they had the 
chance to wreak vengeance for their wrongs, refraining 
from so doing because they felt it would bring reproach 
upon the honor of their native land. 

When we realize that for every 1000 Koreans there are 
only 17 Japanese we can understand what would have hap- 
pened if the demonstrations had not been passive. 

The Japanese Police 

At first the police did not know what to do 'with the 
people. Many of the Korean policemen and supposed spies 
took off their uniforms and joined the crowds. 

In Seoul hundreds of gendarmes — armed with swords and 
rifles — followed the demonstrators and tried to scatter them. 
But as soon as they had been scattered in one place they 
gathered elsewhere with more participants than ever. One 
party of demonstrators marched to the Japanese quarter, 
where the police charged them with fixed bayonets and ar- 
rested fifteen students, including six girls. Those arrested 
went unresisting to jail. Soon the jails were filled to 
overflowing. 

At nightfall the crowd disappeared, but an hour later two 
hundred students, from the Shinsung Academy, assembled 
before the school and gave three cheers for the independence 
of Korea. Then they began to march the streets and some 
of the people distributed copies of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence at the police court and county jail. Some ad- 
dressed the crowd while others distributed literature. Imme- 




(upper) JAPANESE SOLDIERS GUARDING PAGODA PARK TO PREVENT FURTHER 

DEMONSTRATIONS. 
(uOWEb) scene in SEOUL ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE PASSIVE DEMONSTRATION. 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. 31 

diately the. police called out the military, who, without hesi- 
tation, charged the demonstrators with fixed bayonets, ter- 
ribly wounding many — women and old people being among 
the victims. 

Women and children were knocked down with the butts of 
rifles. Innocent spectators were beaten and kicked by Japan- 
ese civilians and firemen, as well as by policemen and gen- 
darmes. Throughout the smaller cities, where there were no 
foreigners, the conditions were much worse. In some in- 
stances, it is reported, the gendarmes fired upon the mobs 
until their ammunition was exhausted. 

The Japanese Government promptly began a denial and 
suppression of the facts, issuing to the outside world only 
what it wished the outside world to know and scrupulously 
avoiding any mention of slaughter and massacres. The 
trouble was minimized in the official reports into a few 
local disturbances, said to have been egged on by misled 
leaders. 

An attempt was made to force prominent Koreans to sign 
a statement, to be forwarded to the Peace Conference in 
Paris, stating that the Declaration of Independence and the 
movement in general was promulgated by a low class of 
people and did not represent the sentiment of Korea. 

Japanese officials in America issued statements denying the 
atrocities. Some foreigners, who had received favoritism at 
the hands of the military autocracy and were pro-Japanese, 
bitterly denounced the movement. But beneath the veil of 
censorship and denial the passive demonstration continued 
and the Japanese police and gendarm.es committed acts which 
were as far against the laws of humanity and civilization as 
the Turkish deeds in Armenia. 

Atrocities and Massacres 

At the town of Cheam-ni, forty-five miles from Seoul, 
the Japanese soldiers arrived and ordered all the male 
Christians to gather at the church. When they had as- 



2>2 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

sembled, the soldiers deliberately opened fire on them with 
their rifles, massacring thirty-five. This was confirmed by 
investigation of the British and American consular agents, 
and is admitted by the Japanese authorities, including Gov- 
ernor-General Hasegawa. 

Soochung, another village near Cheam-ni, was burned and 
the fleeing fugitives shot at and bayoneted by the Japanese 
soldiers as they ran from their burning homes. Reports 
have been received of the burning of nine other villages and 
many Christian churches. The Rev. Stacy L. Roberts, an 
American missionary stationed at Pyeng Yang, reports that 
more than a hundred Koreans were shot or beaten to death 
in Tyung-Ju. Throughout the whole peninsula similar 
atrocities have been committed. 

Little girls of only 10 years of age, women and school 
girls, have been shamefully treated and are subjected to 
physical punishment and torture for no other crime than 
shouting enthusiasm for their ovv^n country and crying out 
for independence. Small boys have been knocked down and 
cruelly beaten. Already it is said that over three hundred 
Korean children, under the age of 7 years, have been put to 
death. The case of a baby, one year old, being shot 
through the back, was witnessed by the Rev. Edward W. 
Twing of Boston, Massachusetts, who is Oriental Secretary of 
the International Reform Bureau. He also saw a crowd of 
about twenty Korean schoolgirls who were quietly walking 
along the road — not even shouting — suddenly pounced upon 
by a body of Japanese soldiers, who savagely beat them 
with their guns, knocked them down and then treated them 
shamefully. 

Old men have been seized by Japanese soldiers and made 
sport of — being pounded, kicked and beaten until they could 
not walk. Men who were dying have been dispatched with 
a shot through the back. Others have been chased and cut 
down with sabers. Deputized firemen, with long iron hooks, 
have been seen chasing boys and girls, trying to catch them. 
One case of an old man who was killed with these hooks, 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. 33 

and his body thrust through and dragged off in triumph, 
comes in a report from an American missionary in Pyeng 
Yang. Americans have been arrested and thrown in jail. 
An American Presbyterian missionary, Rev. Eli Mowry of 
Mansfield, Ohio, has been sentenced to six months in prison 
for sheltering five Koreans for two daj^s. 

Christians — both men and women — have been taken to 
Japanese churches, stripped of their clothing and tied to 
crosses and beaten twenty-nine times upon their naked 
bodies, according to information in the hands of Dr. David 
Lee of San Francisco. Christian churches have been looted 
and Bibles destroyed. Little girls have been dragged from 
their homes by their hair and tied to telegraph poles by the 
same means and publicly flogged. Women have been vio- 
lated and beaten with inhuman viciousness. It has been 
Belgium over again, save that difference in religion, as well 
as nationality, has been seized upon as an excuse for 
bestiality. 

In the first three months over fifty thousand Koreans have 
been killed or wounded. The horror and brutality of some 
of the deeds committed are beyond belief. In the name of 
crushing the Independence Movement, the military author- 
ities have transgressed the laws of all civilization and proved 
beyond the shadow of a doubt that Japanese Military Autoc- 
racy is no longer fit to be respected by any civilized people. 
That the Japanese people should allow such a stain upon their 
nation is incredible. 



THE NEW REPUBLIC 

Before the outbreak of the Independence Movement in 
Korea, proper, the Korean students in Tokio, Japan, number- 
ing about eight hundred, drew up a petition to present to the 
Japanese Emperor and Diet, as well as to the foreign Am- 
bassadors and Ministers in Japan, asking for the freedom 
and independence of Korea. When they attempted to hand 
in the petition they came into conflict with the Japanese 
police and an open fight ensued. Over sixty students were 
arrested and some given prison terms. 

In the United States demonstrations were held by the 
Koreans in New York, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, 
Akron, Ohio ; Pueblo, Colorado ; Yakima, Washington ; Su- 
perior, Wyoming, and in San Francisco, Sacramento, Stock- 
ton, Riverside and Los Angeles, California. 

In Philadelphia — the Cradle of American Liberty — a con- 
gress of Koreans and sympathetic Americans convened. 
Just before it broke up, the delegates adjourned to the 
Declaration Room in Independence Hall. Here, after read- 
ing the Korean Proclamation of Independence, they ap- 
proached the old, cracked Liberty Bell. Amid profound 
silence they placed their hands upon it, and, closing their 
eyes, prayed for the freedom of Korea and the success of 
the new movement. Those who saw them say it was the 
most impressive ceremony the City of Philadelphia has ever 
witnessed. 

Meanwhile, other demonstrations were held in Mexico, 
Manila, Shanghai, Pekin, Siberia and Manchuria. In many 
of these places proclamations were issued, declaring the inde- 
pendence of Korea, and given into the hands of the foreign 
embassies. A National Council was called at Nikolskoe, on 
the Ussuri River in Siberia, and a provisional government 
established, with a temporary capitol in Manchuria. 

A cabinet of eight members was formed and a committee 
consisting of eighteen members was put in charge of the 



THE NEW REPUBLIC 35 

new government. The office of Provisional President was 
left vacant for the time being, the committee as a whole 
serving in the executive capacity. Dr. Syngman Rhee, a 
graduate of Harvard and PhD. of Princeton — receiving his 
degree while Woodrow Wilson was President of the col- 
lege — was named Secretary of State. The portfoHo of 
Secretary of War was given to General Lee Dong Whui, 
who immediately began the organization of an SLvmy. C. H. 
Ahn, prominent Christian educator and organizer of the 
Korean National Association in America, was appointed 
Secretary of the Interior; Yun Hyuh Jin as Secretary of the 
Treasury; Ham Nyung Wee as Secretary of Justice and 
Young Man Park, a graduate of the University of Nebraska, 
as Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

Three delegates were appointed ta put the plea of the 
Korean people before the League of Nations. Two of them, 
Dr. Henry Chung and Dr. Syngman Rhee, were in the 
United States, having fled from Korea just before its an- 
nexation by the Japanese. They held old Korean passports, 
which the State Department at Washington could not recog- 
nize as valid without straining diplomatic relationship be- 
tween the United States and Japan. Naturally the Japan- 
ese Government refused to issue new ones. Therefore, the 
third delegate, John Kiusic Kimm, was the only one to 
reach Paris. He presented the claims before the Peace Con- 
ference, where they are now under consideration. 

Following the first demonstrations, the Japanese War De- 
partment dispatched two additional divisions of troops to 
Korea and began preparations for extended military and 
diplomatic maneuvers. In order to uphold her position at 
the Peace Conference, Japan issued a statement which 
"promised" complete reforms in the administration of Korea 
just as soon as the Independence Movement was crushed. 
She spoke of her "Monroe Doctrine in the Orient" and com- 
pared her administration of Korea to the American admin- 
istration of the Philippines and Cuba. In reality, the cases 
are not similar. In the Philippines franchise is enjoyed, a 



36 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Philippine Senate and House of Representatives is elected 
by the people, with the right to overrule the Governor- 
General's veto. In Korea franchise is not enjoyed by the 
people. They have no legislative representation and the 
Governor-General is supreme, invested with the power of 
control over all Korea, commander of the army and navy 
and virtually a Czar in his own domains. 

As the new republic took form charges were made that 
the Korean people were not sufficiently competent to govern 
themselves and that the Independence Movement was pro- 
mulgated by the spread of Bolshevism from Russia. In 
reality, the new government is a very business-like proposi- 
tion, modeled after the government of the United States as 
far as is possible, consistent with the education of the 
masses. In absolutely no respect does it aim at a redis- 
tribution of wealth, government ownership of industries, 
land nationalization, communism or other Utopian, anarch- 
istic or Bolshevistic dreams. 

The leaders are able, conservative college graduates, and 
realize the limits of their people. Their aim is to establish 
a sound republic with each citizen enjoying freedom of 
speech, religion and personal libert}^ and to have their little 
nation no longer the pawn of Asia. 

All they ask is to be free forever from the Prussian 
trickery, brutality and oppression of Japanese Imperalistic, 
Autocratic Militarism. 



STATEMENTS 
AND PRESS REPORTS 



FRAGMENTS SELECTED FROM 

NEWS ITEMS, PERSONAL LETTERS, 

ARTICLES AND PRESS REPORTS 

JAPAN'S POLICY IN KOREA 

"Since Japan has annexed Korea the spirit of her rule, 
at any rate since the death of Prince Ito, has not been one 
to develop and benefit the Korean people, but to make them 
a subject people and, so far as possible, to stamp out any 
Korean individuality. In the Philippine Islands, in Egypt, 
in India, in spite of complaints that are often made, natives 
still concede that they are given a large part in the govern- 
ment of the country. Not so in Korea. The Koreans are 
treated as an inferior race (by that people that is so in- 
sistent upon racial equality), are forbidden to teach their 
own language, are not allowed to go abroad for study, but 
can be trained only in Korea or in Japan. Now that the 
revolt of the oppressed people has come, it is known on 
unimpeachable testimony that the revolutionists, though 
offering no resistance, are treated with barbarity so severe 
and uncalled-for that it has brought forth the protests of 
foreign residents, English and American business men and 
officials, as well as missionaries." 

JEREMIAH W. JENKS, PhD., LL. D. 
(Research Professor of Government and Public Administra- 
tion, New York University; Chairman , Alexander Ham- 
ilton Institute, and Director The Far Eastern Bureau.) 

GERMAN MILITARY SYSTEM INTRODUCED 

"Thirty missionaries gathered in Seoul, March 16, that I 
might hear the situation discust. They agreed in desig- 
nating the Japanese military and police and gendarme sys- 
tem in the Korean peninsula the German machine ! Foreign- 
ers — consuls, business men, missionaries — are unanimous in 



40 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

their condemnation of the system which has ruled Korea 
since 1910. This system was learned from the Germans. 
While it may have been crushed in Belgium and Europe, it 
still exists in Korea and Asia. 

"The tortures which the Koreans suffer at the hands of 
the police and gendarmes are identical with those employed 
in the famous conspiracy trials. I read affidavits, now on 
their way to the United States and British Governments, 
which made one's blood boil, so frightful were the means 
used in trying to extort confessions from prisoners. And 
many of these had no part in the demonstrations, but were 
simply onlookers. 

"In Tokio, on March 21, by arrangement of Galen M. 
Fisher, National Secretary of the Y. M. C. A. for Japan, I 
met a few Japanese and foreigners and discust the Korean 
situation. One of the Japanese (a member of the Parlia- 
ment, who will be in America in May), told me that the 
more the world knows about Japanese misrule in Korea, the 
better it Avill be for Japan, for thus the sooner will the 
nation get rid of the militarism which now dominates the 
empire." 

A. E. ARMSTRONG, of Toronto, Canada, 
(Assistant Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of 
the Presbyterian Church of Canada.) 

TO REDUCE KOREANS TO SERFDOM 

"It was my opinion when I was in Korea and is my opin- 
ion still, that it is Japan's intention that all the Koreans 
shall be practically serfs, pursuing only the trades of farm- 
ers and artisans, leaving to the Japanese immigrants the 
administration of government, the mercantile and banking 
trades, and other more profitable callings. In other words, 
Korea is being exploited altogether, for the benefit of the 
Japanese, with little thought of any obligation to the natives. 

"The attitude of the Japanese Government toward Ameri- 
can missions, as shown by the unsuccessful attempt to dis- 



STATEMENTS AND PRESS REPORTS. 41 

credit them in the course of the conspiracy in 1912 and the 
limitations put upon the mission schools since, is caused by 
a desire to eliminate anything which may interfere with the 
complete Japanization of Korea and the confining of the 
natives to the status of contented farmers and artisans." 
PROFESSOR T. A. CRANE 

(Pittsburg University.) 

STATEMENT OF THE JAPANESE CONSTITU- 
TIONAL PARTY 

Representative Konosuke Moriya, who was dispatched by 
the Constitutional or opposition party, to Korea to investi- 
gate the disturbances, has reported the insurrection to be 
due to the following causes : 

Discriminatory treatment given to the Korean subjects, 
who are refused equal treatment with Japanese in matters 
relating to appointments in government offices and stipends 
allowed. 

Complicated and impracticable administrative measures, 
particularly strict measures for the tax collection, which are 
against the old customs and manners of Korea. 

Extreme oppression on public speeches. Koreans have no 
organs to give utterance to their complaints which do not 
reach the ears of the Governor-General. 

Forcible adoption of the assimiliation system. It is a great 
error and failure of colonial policy to attempt to enforce 
upon the Koreans, with a 2,000-year history, the same spirit- 
ual and mental training as on the Japanese people. 

Spread of the principle of the self-determination of na- 
tions, v/hich he describes as the rising tide of the thoughts 
of the world's nations and which has deeply implanted itself 
in the minds of the Korean people. 

(Associated Press Correspondence from Tokio, May 2nd, 
1919.) 



42 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

A SAMPLE OF JAPANESE PROPAGANDA 

Despite all rumors to the contrary, there is no tendency 
in the Japanese official quarters to suggest that American 
missionaries have been instigating the uprisings in Korea. 
That a few of them have been subjected to search and 
arrest is, while unfortunate, not to be taken too seriously. 
It needs no effort of the imagination to assume that some 
malcontent Koreans, professing to be Christians, should seek 
to abuse the sanctum of their unsuspecting teachers for their 
misguided endeavors. It is not to be imagined that clergy- 
men who have lived long in Korea and who, with all just 
and right-thinking men, should know the conditions of the 
Koreans and recognize the good the Japanese regime is 
doing them, should ill-advisedly lend themselves to a fatal 
movement, which m.ust end in failure and unnecessary 
bloodshed. 

Reports current in this country of alleged cruelties on 
the part of the Japanese authorities in dealing with the 
situation are utterly unfounded. 

(Extract from a press statement printed in Washington, 
D. C, April 17, 1919, and marked "Exclusive Dispatch.") 

AN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE, PRINTED TWO 
WEEKS EARLIER 

"In a remarkable manner the Korean Independence Move- 
ment has manifested skill, courage and organization that has 
been a great surprise to many. It has shown, more than 
ever before, how unreasonable, without justice, cruel and 
brutal the military rule of Japan is in this land. I could 
hardly believe these things if I had not seen them with my 
own eyes. 

"The police and soldiers have arrested old men and little 
children and cruelly beaten them. . . . These things 
have been witnessed, not by one or two, but by scores of 
missionaries and others in many parts of Korea during 
March. If the world could only know these things, they 



STATEMENTS AND PRESS REPORTS. 43 

would certainly heed this cry of distress from an oppressed 
people. But the Japanese are doing all they can to keep the 
world from knowing the truth. A report has just come that 
in one city, from which letters have been sent, they are mak- 
ing it very hard for the missionaries, even hinting at de- 
portation, unless they stop telling the truth. 

"The following are some of the things that I have actu- 
ally seen with my own eyes: 

"Small school boys knocked down and cruelly beaten by 
Japanese soldiers. This was not a question of arresting 
them, but savage, unjustifiable barbarism. 

"Soldiers stop and deliberately fire into a crowd com- 
posed only of girls and women, who were simply shouting 
'Mansai.* 

"A small boy of 1 year shot through the back. 

"An unresisting old man of 65 years pounded, kicked 
and beaten by several Japanese soldiers until he could not 
walk. 

"A crowd of about twenty school girls, who were quietly 
walking along the public road, not even shouting, chased 
by soldiers, beaten with guns, knocked down and so 
shamefully treated that it made one's blood boil. 

"Japanese firemen chasing boys and girls with long iron 
hooks, trying to catch them with them. 

"A Korean in a hospital, paralyzed, with his head 
crushed in with one of these hooks. 

"A man dying, shot through the back. 

"One hundred men v/ith torn and bloody clothes, tied 
together with ropes, taken to jail. 

"An American missionary roughly arrested while stand- 
ing in his own yard and looking on, but doing nothing else. 

"Women knocked down with guns and kicked into the 
ditch. 

"These and many other things I have seen with my own 
eyes ; other foreigners have seen the same and worse. One 
can little imagine the reign of terror in all parts of this land. 
, . . And the punishments and tortures at the police sta- 



44 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

tions and jails make a still more awful story. I have seen 
men who were beaten on wooden crosses by the Japanese." 

EDWARD W. THWING, of Boston, Mass. 
(Oriental Secretary of the International Reform Bureau.) 

THE MASSACRE AT CHEAM-NI 

Details of the massacre at Cheam-ni were obtained by the 
Associated Press correspondent who visited that place in 
company with Raymond S. Curtice, the American Vice-Con- 
sul at Seoul, and Mr. Underwood, an American missionary. 
Subsequently, the correspondent again visited the place with 
Mr. Royds, the British Consul, and several missionaries, in- 
cluding the Rev. Herron Smith, who is in charge of the 
work of the Methodist church in Korea. Describing his 
visit to Cheam-ni, the Seoul correspondent writes that when 
they asked residents of nearby villages why that hamlet had 
been burned, they were told that it was because there was a 
Christian church and many native Christians in the village. 

"When we got to the place, which had been a village of 
about forty houses, we found only four or five standing, all 
the rest were smoking ruins," he continued. 'We found a 
body, frightfully burned and twisted, lying in a compound, 
and another, either of a young man or woman, just outside 
the church compound. Several groups of people were 
huddled under little straw shelters on the hillside with a 
few of their pitiful belongings about them. They were 
mostly women, some old, others young mothers with babies, 
but all sunk in the dull apathy of abject misery and despair. 
Mr. Underwood, an American missionary, who talked to 
them in their own language, brought the story of what hap- 
pened. 

"The day before Vv^e arrived soldiers came to the village 
and ordered all the male Christians to gather at the church. 
When about thirty were in the church the soldiers opened 
fire on them with rifles and then entered the church and 
finished them oiif with swords and bayonets. After this they 



STATEMENTS AND PRESS REPORTS. 45 

set fire to the church and to houses which otherwise would 
not have been burned." 

One Korean told the correspondent he was alive because 
he was not a Christian and was not in the church. Later 
v/hen the correspondent made a second trip to Cheam-ni 
with Mr. Royds, the British Consul, and a party of seven, 
including several missionaries, he said : "We photographed 
freely without interference, but when we started to talk to 
the natives a policeman would saunter up and the Korean 
would 'freeze up.' They were in fear of what might hap- 
pen later if they were seen talking to us." 

The part}^ however, divided up and obtained many inter- 
views concerning the story, as the correspondent learned it 
on his first visit. They were told that two of those killed 
in or near the church were women who went to that build- 
ing to learn what was happening to their husbands. 

(Associated Press Dispatch from Tokio May 1st, 1919.) 

THE AFFAIR AT DUNGCHOO 

Reports from Korea state that during a demonstration in 
Dungchoo on the 29th of March some persons were 
killed and over two hundred wounded. Forty persons were 
hooked and dragged by Japanese soldiers and firemen and 
half-buried, upright, in front of the railway station, and 
relatives who came to identify the killed and wounded were 
beaten so that nobody dared to fetch away the bodies. 

A local doctor, named Shen, to whom the wounded went 
for treatment, was whipped and beaten with rifie butts and 
finally arrested. Osan Academy was destroyed and the 
church of Heaven Worshipers burned down by the Jap- 
anese. 

(Renter's Dispatch from Pekin, April 4th, 1919.) 

A JAPANESE DIATRIBE AGAINST AMERICAN 
' MISSIONARIES 

"They (the American missionaries) are propagating Chris- 
tianity in Korea, but pay no attention to the interests of 



46 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Japan, the sovereign o£ Korea. While engaged in Christian 
propaganda work, the American Missionaries run schools, 
and diffuse foreign political and social ideas among the half- 
civilized people. The principle of liberty is recklessly advo- 
cated among them, this having an evil influence upon their 
undeveloped minds, which are consequently tainted with 
excessively radical ideas. 

"The American missionaries include in their number some 
some who have no sound judgment and discretion. Such 
people confuse the ideas of the Koreans, who are in a 
similar mental condition as those Japanese students who are 
now making an outcry for democracy, without understand- 
ing what this stands for. As a result, some Korean con- 
verts to Christianity are so senseless as to have recourse to 
radical action." 

H; si< * * * 

"In order to wreak their discontent and bitter feelings, 
these Koreans, under the mask of Christianity, I think, have 
created the present disturbances. It may safely be de- 
clared that missionaries are responsible for the fact that the 
advanced ideas of foreign countries have been diffused with- 
out modification among the Koreans, whose state of civiliza- 
tion is not yet very high, and for the fact that among those 
taking part in the disturbances were girl students." 
(Quotation from Mr. Midoru Komatsu, late Director of 
Foreign Affairs in the Government-General of Korea, 
Published in The Japan Advertiser of March 9th, 1919.) 



OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS 

AND 

PROCLAMATIONS 

OF THE 

PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 

FOR THE 

NEW REPUBLIC OF KOREA 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

"We herewith proclaim the independence of Korea and 
the liberty of the Korean people. We tell it to the world in 
witness of the equality of all nations and we pass it on to 
our posterit}^ as their inherent right. 

"We make this proclamation, having back of us 5,000 years 
of history, and 20,000,000 of a united loyal people. We take 
this step to insure to our children for all time to come, per- 
sonal liberty in accord with the awakening consciousness of 
this new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving 
principle of the present age, the whole human race's just 
claim. It is something that cannot be stamped out, or stifled, 
or gagged, or suppressed by any means. 

"Victims of an older age, when brute force and the spirit 
of plunder ruled, we have come after these long thousands 
of years to experience the agony of ten years of foreign 
oppression, with every loss to the right to live, every restric- 
tion of the freedom of thought, every damage done to the 
dignity of life, every opportunity lost for a share in the in- 
telligent advance of the age in which we live. 

"Assuredly, if the defects of the past are to be rectified, 
if the agony of the present is to be unloosed, if the future 
oppression is to be avoided, if thought is to be set free, if 
right of action is to be given a place, if we are to attain to 
any way of progress, if we are to deliver our children from 
the painful, shameful heritage, if we are to leave blessing 
and happiness intact for those who succeed us, the first of all 
necessary things is the clear-cut independence of our people. 
What cannot our twenty millions do, every man with sword 
in heart, in this day when human nature and conscience are 
making a stand for truth and right? What barrier can we 
not break, what purpose can we not accomplish? 

"We have no desire to accuse Japan of breaking many 
solemn treaties since 1636, nor to single out specially the 
teachers in the schools or government officials who treat the 



50 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

heritage of our ancestors as a colony o£ their own, and our 
people and their civilization as a nation of savages, finding 
delight only in beating us down and bringing us under their 
heel. 

"We have no wish to find special fault with Japan's lack 
of fairness or her contempt of our civilization and the prin- 
ciples on which her state rests; we, who have greater cause 
to reprimand ourselves, need not spend precious time in find- 
ing fault with others; neither need we, who require so 
urgently to build for the future, spend useless hours over 
what is past and gone. Our urgent need today is the settling 
up of this house of ours and not a discussion of who has 
broken it down, or what has caused its ruin. Our work is 
to clear the future of defects in accord with the earnest 
dictates of conscience. Let us not be filled with bitterness or 
resentment over past agonies or past occasions for anger. 

"Our part is to influence the Japanese Government, domi- 
nated as it is by the old idea of brute force which thinks to 
run counter to reason and universal law, so that it will 
change, act honestly and in accord with the principles of 
right and truth. 

"The result of annexation, brought about without any con- 
ference with the Korean people, is that the Japanese, indif- 
ferent to us, use every kind of partiality for their own, and 
by a false set of figures show a profit and loss account be- 
tween us two peoples most untrue, digging a trench of ever- 
lasting resentment deeper and deeper the farther they go. 

"Ought not the way of enlightened courage to be to correct 
the evils of the past by ways that are sincere, and by true 
sympathy and friendly feeling make a new world in which 
the two peoples will be equally blessed? 

"To bind by force twenty millions of resentful Koreans 
will mean not only loss of peace forever for this part of the 
Far East, but also will increase the every-growing suspicion 
of four hundred millions of Chinese — upon whom depends 
the danger or safety of the Far East — besides strengthening 
the hatred of Japan. From this all the rest of the East will 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 51 

suffer. Today Korean independence will mean not only daily 
life and happiness for us, but also it would mean Japan's 
departure from an evil way and exaltation to the place of 
true protector of the East, so that China, too, even in her 
dreams, would put all fear of Japan aside. This thought 
comes from no minor resentment, but from a large hope for 
the future welfare and blessing of mankind. 

"A new era wakes before our eyes, the old world of force 
is gone, and the new world of righteousness and truth is 
here. Out of the experience and travail of the old world 
arises this light on life's affairs. The insects stifled by the 
foe and snow of winter awake at this same time with the 
breezes of spring and the soft light of the sun upon them. 

"It is the day of the restoration of all things on the full 
tide of which we set forth, without delay or fear. We desire 
a full measure of satisfaction in the way of liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness, and an opportunity to develop what is 
in us for the glory of our people. 

"We awake now from the old world with its darkened 
conditions in full determination and one heart and one mind, 
with right on our side, along with the forces of nature, to a 
new life. May all the ancestors to the thousands and ten 
thousand generations aid us from within and all the force of 
the world aid us from without, and let the day we take hold 
be the day of our attainment. In this hope we go forward. 

THREE ITEMS OF AGREEMENT 

"1. This work of ours is in behalf of truth, religion and 
life, undertaken at the request of our people, in order to 
make known their desire for liberty. Let no violence be 
done to anyone. 

"2. Let those who follow us, every man, all the time, 
every hour, show forth with gladness this same mind. 

"3. Let all things be done decently and in order, so that 
our behaviour to the very end may be honorable and up- 
right." 



52 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

The 4252nd Year of the Kingdom of Korea, 3d Month 

Representatives of the People. 
The signatures attached to the document are: 
Son Byung Hi, Kil Sun Chu, Yi Pil Chu, Paik Long Sung, 
Kim Won Kyu, Kim Pyung Cho, Kim Chang Choon, Kwon 
Dong Chin, Kwon Byung Duk, Na Long Whan, Na In Hup, 
Yang Chun Paik, Yang Han Mook, Lew Yer Dai, Yi Kop 
Sung, Yi Mung Yong, Yi Seung Hoon, Yi Chong Hoon, 
Yi Chong II, Lim Yei Whan, Pak Choon Seung, Pak Hi Do, 
Pak Tong Wan, Sin Hong Sik, Sin Suk Ku, Oh Sei Chang, 
Oh Wha Young, Chung Choon Su, Choi Sung Mo, Choi In, 
Han Yong Woon, Hong Byung Ki, Hong Ki Cho. 



AIMS AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE NEW 
KOREAN REPUBLIC 

(1) We believe in government which derives its just 
power from the governed. Therefore, the government must 
be conducted for the interest of the people it governs. 

(2) We propose to have a government modeled after that 
of America, as far as possible, consistent with the education 
of the masses. For the next decade it may be necessary to 
have more centralized power in the government; but as edu- 
cation of the people improves, and as they have more experi- 
ence in the art of self-governing, they will be allowed to 
participate more universally in the governmental affairs. 

(3) However, we propose to give universal franchise to 
elect local and provincial legislators, and the provincial legis- 
lators elect the representatives to the National Legislature. 
The National Legislators will have co-ordinate power with 
the Executive branch of the Government, and they have sole 
power to make laws of the nation, and are solely responsible 
to the people whom they represent. 

(4) The Executive branch consists of President, Vice- 
President and Cabinet Officers, who carry out all the laws 
made by the National Legislature. The President shall be 
elected by the members of the National Legislature; and the 
President has the power to appoint the Cabinet Ministers, 
Governors of Provinces and other such important executive 
officials of the Government, including envoys to foreign coun- 
tries. He has the power to make treaties with foreign 
powers, subject to the approval of the upper house of the 
National Legislature. The President and his Cabinet are 
responsible to the National Legislature. 

(5) We believe in freedom of religion. Any religion or 
doctrine shall be freely taught and preached within the coun- 
try, provided such teaching does not conflict with the laws 
or the interest of the nation. 

(6) We believe in free commerce with all nations of the 
world, affording the citizens and subjects of all treaty powers 



54 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

equal opportunity and protection for promoting commerce 
and industry between them and the Korean people. 

(7) We believe in education of the people, which is more 
important than any other governmental activity. 

(8) We believe in modern sanitary improvements under 
scientific supervision, as the health of the people is one of 
the primary considerations of those who govern. 

(9) We believe in free speech and free press. In fact, 
we are in thorough accord with the principle of democracy, 
equal opportunity, sound economic policies, free intercourse 
with the nations of the world, making conditions of life of 
the entire people most favorable for unlimited development. 

(10) We believe in Hberty of action in all matters, pro- 
vided such actions or utterances do not interfere with the 
rights of other people or conflict with the laws and interests 
of the nation. 

Let us all pledge our solemn word to carry out these 
cardinal points to the best of our ability, as long as there is 
life remaining within us. 



PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION 

By the will of God, the people of Korea, both within and 
without the country, have united in a peaceful declaration of 
their independence, and for over one month have carried on 
their demonstrations in over 300 districts, and because of 
their faith in the movement they have by their representa- 
tives chosen a Provisional Government to carry on to com- 
pletion this independence and so to preserve blessings for our 
children and grandchildren. 

The Provisional Government, in its Council of State, has 
decided on a Provisional Constitution, which it now pro- 
claims. 

1. The Korean Republic shall follow republican prin- 
ciples. 

, 2. All powers of State shall rest with the Provisional 
Council of State of the Provisional Government. 

3. There shall be no class distinction among the citizens 
of the Korean Republic, but men and women, noble and com- 
mon, rich and poor, shall have equality. 

4. The citizens of the Korean Republic shall have re- 
ligious liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of writing and 
publication, the right to hold public meetings and form social 
organizations and the full right to choose their dwellings or 
change their abode. 

5. The citizens of the Korean Republic shall have the 
right to vote for all public officials or to be elected to public 
offi.ce. 

6. Citizens will be subject to compulsory education and 
military service and payment of taxes. 

7. Since by the will of God the Korean Republic has 
arisen in the world and has come forward as a tribute to 
the world peace and civilization, for this reason we wish to 
become a member of the League of Nations. 

8. The Korean Republic will extend benevolent treatment 
to the former Imperial Family. 



56 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

9. The death penalty, corporal punishment and public 
prostitution will be abolished. 

10. Within one year of the recovery of our land the 
National Congress will be convened. 

Signed by: 

The Provisional Secretary of State, 
And the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, 
Home Affairs, 
Justice. 
Finance, 
War, 
Communications. 

In the 1st Year of the Korean Republic, 4th Month. 
The following are six principles of government: 

1. We proclaim the equality of the people and the State. 

2. The lives and property of foreigners shall be re- 
spected. 

3. All political offenders shall be specially pardoned. 

4. We will observe all treaties that shall be made with 
foreign powers. 

5. We swear to stand by the independence of Korea. 

6. Those who disregard the orders of the Provisional 
Government will be regarded as enemies of the State. 



OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION 

Korea proclaims to the nations of the world that the 
people of this land, with a history of 4,000 years, have now, 
in this age of world progress, asserted the independence and 
liberty of their nation. 

Although the Japanese troops have overrun our country, 
as the Germans did Belgium, yet we will not recognize their 
control, and as a people, in this manner, we repudiate their 
government and send out these notifications. 

We, the liberty-loving people of Korea, having declared 
our independence and having chosen our representatives for 
a Provisional Government, through them make this an- 
nouncement. 

We extend our most cordial sentiments to the friendly 
nations that have already had treaty relations with our land 
and also to the new states which have been recently formed 
upon principles of humanity and justice. 

Provisional Government for the 
New Korean Republic. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE 

THE CLAIM OF THE KOREAN PEOPLE 
AND NATION 



FOR LIBERATION FROM JAPAN AND FOR THE 

RECONSTITUTION OF KOREA AS AN 

INDEPENDENT STATE TO BE EFFECTED BY 

AND THROUGH THE PEACE CONFERENCE 

DECLARING AS NULL AND VOID 

OR OTHERWISE ABROGATING THE TREATY 

CONCLUDED AT SEOUL ON AUGUST 22, 1910, 

WHEREBY JAPAN PURPORTED 

TO ANNEX THE EMPIRE OF KOREA 



Petition 



PARIS: APRIL, 1919. 



60 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 



KOREAN DELEGATION 

TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE 
IN SESSION AT PARIS: 

THE PETITION of the KOREAN 
PEOPLE AND NATION for libe- 
ration from Japan and for the recon- 
stitution of Korea as an independ- 
ent state 

RESPECTFULLY SHEWETH: 

The Korean People have been a nation for more than 
4,200 years, with a settled life and culture and with their 
country forming one of the historic states of Asia. During 
most of these Forty-two Centuries, Korea enjoyed national 
independence. 

Korean Independence Recognized. 

2. — The continued existence of Korea as a separate and 
sovereign state was recognized by Japan, the United States, 
Great Britain and other foreign Powers in their respective 
treaties of peace and commerce concluded with the Korean 
Government. 

In the Treaty with the United States, signed at Seoul on 
May 22, 1882, it was expressly agreed that "if other Powers 
deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government the 
other will exert their good offices, on being informed of the 
case, to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing 
their friendly feelings." 

In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895, 
Japan insisted on China's definite recognition of the "full 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 61 

and complete independence and autonomy of Korea." And 
in the first Anglo-Japanese agreement of alliance, concluded 
on January 30, 1902, Japan and Great Britain affirmed and 
substantially guaranteed the independence of Korea. Lastly, 
in the Treaty of Defensive and Offensive Alliance made 
between the Japanese Government and the Korean Govern- 
ment in 1904, Japan specifically guaranteed the independence 
and integrity of Korea. 

Korean Independence as an International Doctrine. 

3. — These treaties not only affirmed and confirmed the 
separate existence of Korea as a sovereign state, but they 
established, it is submitted, Korean independence on the 
basis of an international authority and sanction which no 
single Power could violate without subjecting its action to 
eventual revision by other Powers. 

Japan*s Violation of Korean Independence, 

4.— Such a violation of Korean independence was com- 
mitted by Japan when the Japanese Government — by acts of 
fraud and force — compelled the conclusion of the Treaty of 
August 22, 1910, whereby the then Emperor of Korea pur- 
ported to cede "completely and permanently to His Majesty 
the Emperor of Japan all rights of sovereignty over the 
whole of Korea," with her then population of more than 
Fifteen Million Koreans. 

The Korean Protest. 

5. — Against this extinction of Korean sovereignty and the 
incorporation of their country as a province of Japan, the 
Korean people and nation have strenuously protested and 
do still protest. 

6. — This protest is renewed and is strengthened daily, 
owing to the methods applied by Japan in the administra- 
tion of Korea. In ruthlessness and efficiency these methods 



62 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

exceed those practised by Prussia in her eastern provinces, 
in Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine*. 

Not only in name but in reality, Japan is determined to 
turn Korea into a Japanese province. And she is trying to 
do this by a pitiless attempt tc extirpate the great roots of 
patriotism — love of the soil, language of the people and the 
history of the nation — and also to "control" the two means 
which might render futile this organized attempt to de- 
stroy Korean patriotism, i. e., education and wealth. 

Japanese "Control" of Korean Education and Wealth. 

7. — Any and every department of modern education cal- 
culated, if pursued beyond a certain point, to encourage v/hat 
Count Terauchi— the Japanese proconsul who "annexed" 
Korea — calls "dangerous thoughts" is either forbidden or 
taught in an emasculated sense in the schools of Korea un- 
der Government control. And the Korean student is abso- 
lutely prohibited from going to Europe or the United States 
to seek a modern education, even at his or her expense. 

8, — Nearly every wealthy Korean is obliged to have a Jap- 
anese overseer at his house, controlling his properties and 



*"A rigid spy system is inaugurated (in Korea). Everyone must be 
registered and is given a number, which is known to_ the police. 
Every time he leaves his vnllage or town he must register at the 
police station and state fully the business he intends to transact and 
his destination. The policeman phones to this place and if his actions 
are in any way at variance with his report he is liable to arrest and 
mistreatment. A strict classification is kept on the basis of a man's 
education, influence, position, etc. As soon as a man begins to show 
ability or qualities of leadership he is put in class 'a', detectives are 
set on his trail, and from thenceforth he becomes a marked man, 
hounded wherever he goes. Even children are watched or bribed for 
information. If a man escapes the country his number is traced, his 
family or relatives arrested and perchance tortured until they re^real 
his whereabouts. A man is likely to disappear any day and perhaps 
not be heard of again. It is a very efficient Prussiamsm which thus 
aims to crush the spirit of a people. _ ,,.,,. 

"This policy is carried out in the educational system by forbidding 
the teaching of Koiean history or geography • • • by excluding 
all European history or literature, ... by forbidding any Ko- 
rean student to go abroad for an education; in fact, by forbidding 
them to leave the country; ... by forbidding them to entertain 
or express Korean ideas or aspirations. One student was put in jail 
for three months and fined three hundred dollars because he was 
caught singing the Korean national anthem." — From a paper recently 
published in the United States by J. E. Moore, an American born in 
Korea. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 63 

finances. And Koreans with deposits in the banks — which 
are all Japanese institutions — cannot withdraw large amounts 
at one time without disclosing to the hanks the purpose or 
purposes for which the money is to be used. 

Japan and Christianity. 

9. — Every effort is made by the Japanese authorities — par- 
ticularly through their police agents — to discourage and ob- 
struct Christian missionary work in Korea which is envisaged 
as opposed to vital Japanese interests in the peninsula. 

Is not the gravest indictment of Japan's work in Korea to 
be read in the fact that Christianity is seriously regarded as 
a force hostile to the success of the Japanese system of gov- 
ernment in the country f 

Korea for the Japanese, 

10. — The Japanese authorities claim that "reforms" have 
been introduced into Korea. But it is well to remember that 
most of these reforms, valuable as they are, may be found 
in a well-regulated penal colony ("The Korean Conspiracy 
Case," New York), and all of them have been effected or 
introduced at the expense of the Korean taxpayer in the 
interest and for the benefit of the Japanese settler for whom 
the Japanese authorties are bent on making Korea an at- 
tractive field of colonization. 

11. — The Japanese rules and administers Korea in the spirit 
and by the methods of a Master-Nation or, more accurately, 
a Profiteer-Nation. 

Except in the sense that cattle or slaves must be taken 
care of if they are to be of any value to their owners, the 
welfare of the Korean people is not an aim of government 
with Japan. 

Japan Against the World, 

12.~In addition to these reasons connected directly with 
the fate of the Korean people, the vital interests of the 
world — especially the Asiatic interests of France and the 



64 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Asiatic and Pacific interests of Great Britain and the United 
States— demand the dis-annexation of Korea and the libera- 
tion of her people from Japan. 

13. — In trade and commerce, Japan is gradually eliminat- 
ing the Western trader and merchant in Korea and trans- 
ferring to the exclusive hands of her own people tradal inter- 
ests which have had their origin in the series of treaties of 
peace and commerce concluded between Korea and the 
foreign powers. 

In this elimination of Western competition, Japan con- 
tinues true to that instinct for exclusion which, in the past, 
found expression in her rigidly guarded isolation and which, 
today, expresses itself in the menacing attempt to Exclude 
Western Influence in Far Asia through the application of a 
debased Monroe Doctrine for the Far East. 

Japan's Continental Policy. 

14. — It is, however, in the far-reaching political aims of 
Japan — realizable eventually through her continued annexa- 
tion of Korea — that France, as well as Great Britain and 
America, must be vitally interested. 

The danger to the non-Japanese world, including especially 
the three Latin and Anglo-Saxon powers, lies in Japan's un- 
fettered prosecution of her Continental Policy. 

This policy aims, first, at the seizure of the hegemony of 
Asia through the domination and control of the man-power 
and natural resources of China — possible by the Japanese 
possession of the continental point d'appui of Korea — and, 
next, at the mastery of the Pacific as the sole means of 
securing unrestricted entrance for the Japanese immigrant 
into Australasia and the United States. 

The Policy in Operation. 

15. — Japan's Continental Policy has already found expres- 
sion — 

(a) In two successful wars which have made her the great- 
est military power in Asia in much the same way that Prus- 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 65 

sia's two wars made her the greatest military power in 
Europe ; 

(b) In the annexation of Korea; 

(c) In the gradual substitution of Japanese for Chinese 
authority in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia; 

(d) In the attempt now being made to secure from the 
Peace Conference the succession of Japan to German hold- 
ings and privileges in the Chinese province of Shantung, 
including Kiaochow; 

(e) In the growing subjection of China, with her incal- 
culable man-power and resources, to Japanese domination by 
and through the same set of methods which made the an- 
nexation of Korea a "political necessity"; and 

(/) In the Japanese possession of the "South Sea Islands 
north of the Equator," which bring Japan nearly two thou- 
sand miles closer to Australia and gives the Japanese Navy 
a base which dominates, practically, the entire land-areas of 
the Pacific. 

The Korean Revolution. 

16. — The protest and opposition of the Korean people to 
Japanese annexation of their country and to the process of 
political extermination applied to them by the Mikado's 
agents has now expressed itself in the Korean Revolution. 

On the 1st of March, at 1 p. m., the Korean People and 
Nation declared their independence. This act of independ- 
ence was formally done by the National Independence Union, 
composed of three million Koreans representing and express- 
ing the desire and will of 18,700,000 Koreans in Korea prop- 
er, in China, Siberia, in Hawaii and in the United States. 

The declaration states: "It is our solemn duty to secure 
the right of free and perpetual development of our own na- 
tional character, adapting ourselves to the principles of the 
reconstruction of the world — to secure our independence, to 
wipe out injuries, get rid of our present sufferings, and leave 
our children eternal freedom instead of a bitter and shame- 
ful inheritance." 



66 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Progress of the Revolution. 

17. — The Korean Delegation — appointed by the New Ko- 
rean Young Men's Society to which are affiliated the Korean 
National Independence Union and other bodies organized in 
the cause of Korean independence — is in receipt of several 
cable dispatches reporting the progress of the revolution and 
the national movement for independence. 

A dispatch from the Korean National Independence Union 
received in Paris, via Shanghai, on April 7th, instant, reads 
in part as follows : "On March 26 we held grand demonstra- 
tions at Seoul. Our national flags were flown on the city 
hills. The Japanese arrested two hundred of those who par- 
ticipated in the demonstrations. There were casualties on 
both sides. Samnam (i. e. all provinces south of Seoul) 
are uprising every day. Korean demonstrations are taking 
place in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria." 

The Korean Republic. 

18. — The same dispatch reports the organization of a Pro- 
visional Government of Korea, consisting of a President, 
Vice-President, Secretary of State, Minister for Home 
Affairs, Minister of Finance, Minister of Justice and Min- 
ister of War. 

Among those included in the Provisional Government are 
Prince Pak Yung-hio and Messrs. Rhee Syngman, Ahn 
Chang Ho and Li Tong Whi. Prince Pak Yung-hio is one 
of the five great leaders who inaugurated what is known in 
Korean history as the movement of the Progressive Party in 
1884. He was the chief figure among the Progressives who, 
in 1894, compelled the introduction of modern reforms into 
Korea. He was at one time Minister for Home Affairs be- 
fore the annexation. Rhee Syngman is an M.A. of Har- 
vard, U. S. A., and Ph. D. of Princeton, U. S. A. Since 
1894 he has been one of the leaders of the old Korean Inde- 
pendence Club. As a political worker he has suffered im- 
prisonment and he has also been tortured. Ahn Chang Ho 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 67 

is the founder of the Sin Min Hueh or People's Society and, 
since 1905, has been a leader of young Korean nationalists. 
He is the President of the Korean National Association. Li 
Tong Whi is a former major in the old Korean Army and a 
recognized leader of Korean nationalists in Siberia and Man- 
churia. He has been imprisoned and tortured by the Jap- 
anese authorities. 

Japanese Repression. 

19.^Another dispatch received by the Korean delegation 
on April 10th inst, states that "from the 1st of March up to 
date, active demonstrations of the Independence movement 
have been very well conducted all over Korea. Representa- 
tives prefer passive revolution, including lecturing and dis- 
tribution of manifestoes. Girls more active. Strikes have 
occurred in enemy (Japanese) factories, stores, etc. Our 
churches, schools and stores closed everywhere. Thirty- 
two thousand men and women are in prison. About 100,000 
have been injured, including old people, girls and children. 
Interior traffic communications severed. Terrible outrages 
committed by enemy (Japanese). Missionaries are sending 
truth to world." 

In a further dispatch which reached the Korean delega- 
tion on April 11th inst., Japanese atrocities are reported: 
"Japan has begun massacring in Korea. On March 28 over 
1,000 unarmed people were killed during a three-hour demon- 
stration held in Seoul. The shooting, beating and hooking 
( Pbayoneting) of people are in merciless progress through- 
out Korea. Churches, schools and homes of leaders have 
been destroyed. Women are being stripped naked and beaten 
before crowds, especially female members of leaders' fam- 
ilies. The imprisoned are being tortured. Doctors are for- 
bidden to attend to the wounded. We ask urgently aid from 
Foreign Red Cross. We have decided to fight for freedom 
until last Korean falls. We solicit help in the name of 
God." 

Of the many news dispatches on the subject appearing in 



68 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

the American and the European press, it must suffice here to 
quote the latest from the Tokio correspondent of the London 
"Times." It appeared in the issue of the London paper on 
April 17th inst., under the caption "Korea's Rights": "While 
it is recognized that there can be only one outcome of the 
disturbances in Korea, the Government's decision to rein- 
force the military establishment in the peninsula evokes uni- 
versal press comment, the feature of which is the recognition 
that it will be inevitable, when opportunity occurs, to replace 
the Military Governor by a Civilian Governor. The 'Nichi- 
Nichi' attributes the disturbances chiefly to a mistaken con- 
ception of the principle of self-determination, also to the 
inimical influence of missionaries. The 'Jiji' says it is evi- 
dent that many reforms are necessary in Korea. Another 
journal dwells on the fact that the Koreans are not an in- 
ferior people. * * *" 

Abrogation of the Treaty of Annexation. 

20. — The Korean people submit that the Treaty of Annexa- 
tion of August 22, 1910, should be declared Null and Void or 
otherwise abrogated by the Peace Conference for the reasons 
set forth in this petition and further elaborated in the memo- 
randum hereto attached and more especially for the reasons 
following : 

L — The said Treaty of annexation was conluded in cir- 
cumstances of Fraud and Force which vitiated its validity as 
a legal and international document, even assuming that the 
then Emperor of Korea had the right to hand over to "His 
Majesty the Emperor of Japan" Fifteen Million Koreans and 
St country that had existed as a separate and sovereign state 
for more than 4,200 years. 

n. — The Korean people and nation have consistently de- 
nied the right of the then "puppet" Emperor of Korea to deal 
with them in terms of the said Treaty of Annexation. Being 
men and not cattle, they hold that their consent is and has 
been an essential condition to the validity of the said treaty. 
This consent has never been given. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 69 

III. — That said Treaty of Annexation was and is a direct 
violation by Japan of the International guarantees entered 
into by the Japanese Government with Korea and other 
Powers regarding Korean independence and integrity*. 

IV. — In the several Treaties concluded between Korea and 
Japan and other Powers, and by Japan with China, with 
Russia and with Great Britain, regarding Korea, the exist- 
ence of the latter as a separate and sovereign state is — as to 
all these treaties — explicitly recognized and its political inde- 
pendence and territorial integrity is — as to some of them — 
also explicitly guaranteed in terms establishing the same on 
the basis of a public law of nations which no single Power — 
especially Japan — could violate without subjecting its action 
to eventual revision by the Powers assembled in an inter- 
national congress like the present Peace Conference. 

V. — The Peace Conference meets in order to secure a set- 
tlement of the affairs of the member-nations according to the 
principles expressed in President Wilson's Fourteen Points. 
The principles underlying this statement of views is defined 
by the President in his message to Congress on January 8, 
1918, as "the principle of justice to all peoples and nation- 
alities and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and 
safety with one another, whether they he strong or weak." 

As one of the allied and associated states in the war, 
Japan has expressly accepted the Fourteen Points with their 
underlying principle of justice. Inasmuch as this principle 
of justice is clearly violated by the Mikado's continued exer- 
cise of "all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea" 
without the consent and against the wishes of the Korean 
People and Nation, it becomes the right and the duty of the 



*The Japan-Korean treaty of February 26 or 27, 1876, states in the 
first article "Chosen being an independent state enjoys the same sov- 
ereign rights as does Japan." 

In the Japan-Russian protocol of April 25, 1898, it is stipulated in 
article I that the "Imperial Governments of Japan and Russia defin- 
tively recognize the sovereignty and entire independence of Korea, and 
mutually engage to refrain from all direct interference in the internal 
affairs of that country." 

The Japan-Korean protocol of February 23, 1904, provides (art. 3) 
that the "Imperial Government of Japan definitively guarantees the 
independence and territorial integrity of the Korean Empire." 



70 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Peace Conference to declare the nullification or otherwise 
decree the abrogation of the aforesaid Treaty of Annexation. 

VI. — In virtue of rights founded in International Law and 
of the New Justice which is to redress the wrongs of nations, 
the Korean People have a just claim for the Reconstruction 
of Korea as an Independent State unless, indeed, they are to 
be excluded from the scope of the principles which have 
already found expression in the reconstitution of Poland 
after almost one and a half centuries of partitions and an- 
nexations and in the dis-annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after 
nearly half a century of Prussian rule. 

It is less than ten years since Japan effected the annexa- 
tion of Korea. And the fact that the outbreak of the war 
did not find Japan an ally of the Central Powers — a political 
combination that had always been envisaged by the German- 
trained advisers of the Mikado — is no reason why the 
Korean People should be suffered by the Peace Conference 
to continue to live under a system of military government 
which is a denial of every principle for which men have 
lately died on the soil of France. 

This petition is presented in the name and on behalf of the 
Provisional Republican Government of Korea and of the 
eighteen million seven hundred thousand Koreans living in 
Korea proper, in China, Siberia, Hawaii, the United States 
and elsewhere as well as of the five thousand and more 
Koreans who fought for the Allied cause on the Eastern 
Front before the treaty of Brest-Litovsk— in the aggregate 
forming and constituting the Korean People and Nation — 
by the undersigned John Kiusic Soho Kimm, the duly ac- 
credited member of the Korean Delegation appointed by the 
New Korean Young Men's Society, etc., etc. 

J. KIUSIC S. KIMM, 
Delegate of New Korean Young Men's Society, 
Delegate of the Korean National Association, 
Delegate of the Provisional Government of the 
Korean Republic, Etc., Etc., Etc. 



KOREAN DELEGATION 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE 



THE CLAIM OF THE KOREAN PEOPLE 
AND NATION 

FOR LIBERATION FROM JAPAN 

AND FOR THE RECONSTITUTION 

OF KOREA AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE 



Memorandum 



PARIS: APRIL, 1919. 



12 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

THE CLAIM OF THE KOREAN PEOPLE 

AND NATION FOR LIBERATION FROM JAPAN 

AND FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF KOREA 

AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE 

I. 
The Claim of Korea. 

The Korean People and Nation hereby petition the Peace 
Conference to declare as null and void the Treaty of August 
22, 1910 (a), whereby one Korean — the then Emperor of 
Korea — purported, under Japanese coercion, to cede "com- 
pletely and permanently to His Majesty the Emperor of 
Japan all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea" 
v/ith her then population of over Fifteen Million Koreans. 

It is submitted that the present claim deals with a matter 
in respect of which the Peace Conference has the right and 
authority to take action. 

The Conference meets in order to secure a settlement of 
the affairs of the member-nations in terms of the principles 
set forth in President Wilson's Fourteen Points. The "evi- 
dent principle" running through the "whole program" is 
defined by the President in his message to Congress on 
January 8, 1918, as "the principle of justice to all peoples 
and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of 
liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong 
or weak." 

As one of the AlHed and Associated States, Japan has ex- 
pressly accepted the Fourteen Points, with their underlying 
principle of justice, as the "foundation" of the "structure 
of international justice" to be established by the Peace Con- 
ference. 

Inasmuch as this principle of justice is obviously violated 
by the Mikado's continued exercise of "all rights of sover- 
eignty over the whole of Korea" without the consent and 



(a) See Appendix No. 1. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 73 

against the wishes of the Korean People and Nation, it is at 
once the right and the duty of the Peace Conference to 
declare the nullification of the aforesaid Treaty of August 
22, 1910. 

II. 
4y200 Years of National Life, 

The Korean people were a nation, with a language and a 
culture of their own, before Japan ceased to be a land of 
warring tribes and unlettered people. Indeed, it is as much 
to Korea as to China — the other historic state now under 
deadly assault by Japan — that the Japanese owe not a little 
of their cultural development and the thoughts and ideals 
which have nourished their mind and enabled them to cap- 
ture greatness. 

The nationhood of the Korean People had lasted for more 
than 4,200 years when Japan consummated her work in 
Korea by the Treaty of August 22, 1910. And save for an 
intervening period when their liberties were assailed the 
Koreans lived through these forty-two centuries as an in- 
dependent nation, their country forming one of the separate 
states of Asia. 

III. 
The Independence of Korea. 

The continued existence of Korea as a separate and 
sovereign state was affirmed and recognized by Japan in 
the Treaty of Peace and Amity concluded between the 
Korean Government and the Japanese Government at Seoul 
on February 27, 1876. 

The independence of Korea as the "Kingdom of Chosen" 
was recognized by the United States of America in the 
Treaty of "Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation" con- 
cluded with the Korean Government on May 22, 1882, which 
contained the important clause that "if other Powers deal 
unjustly or oppressively with either Government the other 



74 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

will exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, 
to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing their 
friendly feelings." 

Korean sovereignty was also recognized and admitted by 
Great Britain and other Powers in their respective Treaties 
of peace and commerce concluded with the Korean Govern- 
ment. 

In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895, 
Japan compelled China definitely to recognize the "full and 
complete independence and autonomy of Korea." 

The independence of Korea was also affirmed and sub- 
stantially guaranteed by Japan and Great Britain in the first 
Anglo-Japanese agreement of alliance concluded on Janu- 
ary 30, 1902. 

And, lastly, in a Treaty of Defensive and Offensive Alli- 
ance concluded between the Japanese Government and the 
Korean Government in 1904, Japan guaranteed the independ- 
ence of Korea and the latter guaranteed material aid to 
Japan in the later prosecution of the war against Russia. 

IV. 
"Transactions in Freedom.** 

It was to protect and maintain the independence and terri- 
torial integrity of Korea that Japan professed to have fotight 
her first continental wars against China in 1894-5. 

And a similar purpose was alleged when Japan challenged 
and defeated the Tsardom in 1904-5. 

That Japan emerged out of these two wars with an inter- 
national prestige which no mere military victories could 
have won her is mainly to be assigned to the knightly 
gesture expressed in what seemed in the eyes of men as 
high transactions in freedom, 

V. 
Prussia and Japan. 

The falseness of it all is now plain. And what must be 
termed the bad faith and duplicity of Japan cannot fail to 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 75 

arrest the attention of a world already outraged by the im- 
moral acts of a race whose home is the "spiritual home" of 
the leaders of Japan. 

Like Prussia in her two wars against Austria and against 
France, Japan "prepared" for her two wars against China 
and against Russia; and as Prussia became the leading mili- 
tary Power in Europe, so Japan has become the leading 
military Power in Asia as a result of her "defensive" wars 
against the two countries that stood in the path of her con- 
tinental ambitions. And in quite a true sense, it may be 
said that Prussia and Japan are the two modern Powers 
which have profited greatly from the business of war. 

If there be any difference between these two predatory 
Powers, the same lies in the deeper immorality of Japan. 
Prussia conceived, prepared and won her two wars in order 
to forge an Imperial Germany as an instrument of European 
hegemony. She did not load her crime with the death of a 
nation whose independence and integrity had been guaran- 
teed by her in solemn treaties. Nor did she vulgarize her 
great sin by meanly lying to the world and representing her 
policy of plunder and aggrandizement in the sense of 
knightly action undertaken for the protection of an en- 
dangered people. 

All this and more Japan has done. 

VI. 

The Protectorate of Korea. 

Within a few months of the last of the Treaties in which 
Japan guaranteed the perpetual independence and integrity 
of Korea, the Treaty of Portsmouth Vv^as concluded in which 
Japan compelled Russia to acknowledge that "Japan possesses 
in Korea paramount political, military and economical in- 
terests" and to "engage neither to obstruct nor interfere with 
the measures of guidance, protection and control which the 
Imperial Government of Japan may find it necessary to 
take in Korea." 



76 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Three weeks later — i. e., on September 27, 1905 — the 
second Treaty o£ Alliance between Japan and Great Britain 
was published. The independence of Korea, which was 
expressly recognized in the first Anglo-Japanese agreement, 
was significantly omitted in this renewal of the alliance. 

This sinister omission was quickly followed, twenty days 
later, by the conclusion of the Treaty subjecting Korea to 
the protectorate of Japan. It is safe to say that this trans- 
action is without parallel in civilized history. An account 
of the crime can be read in the pages of McKenzie's 
"Tragedy of Korea" and in the "Passing of Korea," by 
Homer B. Hulbert. 

The Treaty of Portsmouth was hardly signed when the 
Marquis Ito arrived at Seoul and instantly set about to 
impose on Korea "measures of guidance, protection and 
control." The story reads like some devilish episode in the 
days when Europe lay in darkness. 

Ito — "the Bismarck of Japan" — packed the streets of Seoul 
with Japanese soldiers, surrounded the Palace with a cordon 
of troops and forced the distraught Emperor and his Min- 
isters, literally at the point of the bayonet, to sign the in- 
famous Treaty of Seoul. But despite all this coercion, the 
Treaty was signed by neither the Emperor's Prime Minister 
nor his Minister for Foreign Affairs. And the Treaty was 
vitiated by the non-affixion of the great seal of the State 
Council and of that of the Foreign Office. Even under force, 
the great seal was not produced; and like a gesture of 
despair, the seal of the Foreign Office was flung into a lotus 
pond just as the Ministers were being driven into the Coun- 
cil Chamber by armed Japanese. 

The history of Korea during the five years of the Pro- 
tectorate is a record of deeds of fraud and terrorism pos- 
sible only in the case of a Power like Japan whose soul is 
mediaeval but whose methods are Prussian in their ruth- 
lessness and efficiency. It is the record of a scientific bar- 
barism applied to the work of stabbing a nation to death. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. n 

VII. 
The Annexation of Korea, 

And death soon came to Korea. In the words of a 
French writer "le Japon couronnait son oeuvre en Coree" in 
the Treaty done at Seoul on August 22, 1910, which pur- 
ported to hand over to "His Majesty the Emperor of Japan" 
an ancient Kingdom with its population of over fifteen mil- 
lion, as if cattle — not men— were under traffic. 

Against this extinction of Korean sovereignty and the 
incorporation of their country as a province of Japan, the 
Korean People and Nation have strenuously protested and 
do still protest. 

VIII. 
Japanization and Prussianization. 

This protest is founded not only on the forcible destruc- 
tion of Korean liberties but on the fiercer application, by 
Japan in Korea, of the principles and methods practiced by 
the Tsardom in Finland and in Russian Poland and by the 
German teachers of Japan in the Eastern Provinces, in 
Schleswig-Holstein and in Alsace-Lorraine as well as by 
the unspeakable Turk in Armenia. 

The political cruelties involved in the Prussianization of 
the Poles in the Eastern Provinces, of the Danes in Schles- 
wig and of the French in Alsace-Lorraine are surpassed by 
the political enormities accompanying the Japanization of 
Korea. 

Although fundamental human instincts and the barrier of 
geography oppose her work in Korea, Japan is determined 
to make the country, not only in name but in reality, a 
Japanese province. She is trying to do this by a pitiless at- 
tempt to extirpate the great roots of patriotism; love of the 
soil, language of the people and the history of the country. 
And she is also "controlling" the two means which might 
render futile this organized attempt to extinguish the light 
of patriotism in Korea — education and wealth. 



78 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

IX. 
Expropriation of Korean Landowners. 

Korean ownership of land binds Korean hearts to the 
ancient soil of Korea and is therefore a vigorous "root" of 
Korean patriotism. This ownership of land by the Korean 
farmer and peasant prevents also the success of Japanese 
colonization in Korea, the best arable lands of the country 
being naturally in the hands of the Korean agriculturists. 
For this double reason, the expropriation of the Korean 
landowner is a cardinal aim of Japanese policy in Korea. 

Accordingl}^, a company has been organized b}^ direction 
of the Japanese Government and is supported by an annual 
subsidy of $250,000 from the Imperial Treasury. According 
to an article in the "New York Times" of January 26, 1919, 
the purpose of the company "is to colonize Korea with 
Japanese who are unable to make a living in Japan proper. 
A Japanese emigrant receives free transportation to Korea 
and is provided with a home and a piece of land, together 
with implements and provisions . . . the colonization 
company sought to buy the lands of the Korean farmers. 
There are eighty thousand square miles of land in Korea, 
supporting a population of fifteen millions, mostly agri- 
culturists, and these natives declined to part with their 
heritage." 

"Here was where the aid of the Japanese Government," 
the article continues, "\y^s besought and secured, and the 
manner in which the solution of the problem was obtained 
was peculiarly Oriental in its subtlety. In Korea all the 
financial machinery centers in the Bank of Chosen, controlled 
by the Government and located at Seoul, the capital. Through 
its branches the powerful financial institution, corresponding 
to the Bank of England or the Treasury of the United States 
or the Bank of France, perhaps, called in all the specie in 
the country, thus making, as far as a circulating medium 
was concerned, the land practically valueless. In order to 
pay taxes and to obtain necessaries of life the Korean must 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 79 

have cash, and in order to get it he must sell his land. 
Land values fell rapidly, and in some instances land was 
purchased by the agents of the Bank of Chosen for one-fifth 
of its former valuation." 

"More than one-fifth of the richest lands in Korea," the 
article adds, "are in the hands of the Japanese immigrants 
who have been sent over through the operation of this 
scheme." 



Banning the Korean Language and History. 

A systematic attempt is being made to replace the Korean 
by the Japanese language. In the schools Korean children 
are com^pelled to salute and greet their own Korean teachers 
in the Japanese language; and in the law courts, the judges 
are Japanese and the entire proceedings are conducted in 
the Japanese language with the result that the Korean liti- 
gant generally fails to understand what transpires, the official 
interpretation of the trial being always imperfect. 

The teaching of Korean history is prohibited. And im- 
prisonment, torture, banishment or worse might be the 
penalty if some Korean should be tempted to recite to 
children of the soil a traditional story or song or some 
folklore telling how men fought and died for Korea in 
other days. 

XL 
*' Controlling** Korean Education. 

It is Japan's "control" of the education of the Korean 
people which strikingly reveals the "egoism" of her policy 
in the Peninsula. 

Korea has been known as a land of scholars. And just as 
some countries may be said, broadly, to specialize in^ some 
particular sphere of learning and culture, so Korea in the 
past "specialized" in scholarship. The Itahan, for instance, 
loves not song and music more than doth the cultured 



80 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Korean love the things of the scholar. He is an artist in 
scholarship. 

But to be a scholar, one must be educated. An educated 
Korean, however, is a unit of protest and resistance against 
Japanese tyranny in Korea, since education — particularly 
modern education — breeds thoughts and ideals that deny 
the right of one nation holding another nation in political 
serfage. 

Therefore, not only is the teaching of Korean history pro- 
hibited in Korean schools, but any and every department of 
Western learning calculated, if pursued beyond a certain 
point, to encourage what Count Terauchi — the Japanese pro- 
consul who "annexed" Korea — calls "dangerous thoughts," 
is either forbidden or taught in an emasculated sense. 

This policy of a "limited education" explains why the 
Korean student is denied free access to the road to higher 
learning in arts, sciences, laws, politics, economics and in- 
dustries and is also absolutely prohibited from going to 
Europe or the United States to seek a Western or modern 
education, even at his or her own expense. 

This same policy also explains the forcible suppression of 
360 Christian schools and hundreds of other private insti- 
tutions in Korea. It further explains the following statistics 
published in the report of the Government-General in Korea 
for the year ending 1917. 

For a population of 16,648,129 Koreans, the Japanese au- 
thorities established schools at which only 86,410 Korean 
pupils were being taught as follows : 

441 Common or Primary Schools 81,845 pupils 

7 Higher Common Schools 1,791 

74 Elementary Schools of Agriculture, 

Commerce and Industry 2,029 

1 Law School 138 

1 Medical School 253 " 

1 Industrial School 282 

1 School of Agriculture and Forestry 12 
totaling 526 schools of all grades, attended by 86,410 pupils. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 81 

Whereas for a Japanese immigrant population of 320,938, 
the authorities estabHshed 367 special Japanese schools of all 
grades, which were attended by 42,467 Japanese pupils as 
follows : 

342 Primary Schools 37,911 pupils 

3 Middle Schools 1,478 "' 

10 Girls' High Schools (public) 1,648 " 

7 Commercial Colleges 899 " 

1 Colonial School of the Oriental De- 
velopment Company 18 " 

4 Private Schools, Commercial and 

Technical 513 " 

The foregoing facts justify the following statement of 
Japan's educational policy in Korea, which has appeared in 
the American press and stands uncontradicted: "Under 
Japanese rule all national aspirations [in Korea] are opposed 
and measures are taken to prevent the development of 
patriotism. This is done systematically, in many different 
ways. One of the greatest and most effective agencies used 
by Japan to this end is the stifling of higher education and 
the limitations placed upon the schools. Korean history 
cannot be taught and after the student has advanced a little 
way he must stop school altogether . . ." 

XII. 
"Controlling" Korean Wealth. 

Nearly every wealthy Korean is obliged to have a Japanese 
overseer at his house, controlling his properties and finances. 

Koreans with deposits in the hanks — which are all Japanese 
institutions — cannot withdraw large amounts at one time 
without disclosing to the hanks the purpose or purposes for 
which the money is to he used. 



82 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

xni. 

The Korean Kitchen Knife, 

Koreans are generally prohibited the use of firearms or 
having the same in any shape or form in their possession. 

And it is not a little interesting to note that an American 
investigator, in the course of his inquiries into the state of 
Korea under the Japanese, found that no family in some 
places was permitted to own the Korean kitchen knife which 
has been in common use from time immemorial. One such 
knife had to be shared by five or six families and, when not 
in use, it had to be hung at a spot in full view of the beat 
of a Japanese gendarme. The report of this American in- 
vestigator has not been published owing to the official view 
regarding the inexpediency of its publication. 

XIV. 
Japan's Hostility to Christianity. 

In the belief that Christianity breeds a spirit of self- 
respect inconsistent with the state of submission demanded 
by Japanese policy in Korea, the Mikado's government has 
been envisaging the work of the Christian Missions in the 
country as opposed to vital Japanese interests. For this 
reason every effort is made by the Japanese authorities — 
particularly through their police agents — to discourage and 
obstruct Christian missionary work in Korea. 

A signal instance of this official Japanese hostility to 
Christianity in Korea is afforded by the cruel persecution 
of Korean Christians involved in what is known as "The 
Korean Conspiracy Case" (b). 

Is not the gravest indictment of Japan's work in Korea to 
be read in the fact that Christianity is seriously regarded as 
a force hostile to the success of the Japanese system of 
government in the country? 

(b) See Appendix No, 2, 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 83 

XV. 
Korea as *'One Big Fortress.** 

With a gesture of achievement Japan points to the mate- 
rial improvements effected by her in Korea. She has built 
railroads that extend beyond the frontier and penetrate into 
South Manchuria, which is already within the grip of the 
Korean railway system. She has constructed highways and 
streets and set up imposing modern buildings for the housing 
of the Japanese army of officials "running" the country. And 
no doubt the sanitary condition of certain urban centers has 
been improved. 

About all this work of "improvement and progress" in the 
material life of Korea, you can read — every twelvemonth — 
in the splendidly illustrated pages of the "Annual Report" 
issued by the "Government-General of Chosen (Korea)." 
No expense seems to be spared in the preparation and pro- 
duction of this annual publication. It is reckoned among the 
chief weapons of Japanese propaganda abroad. 

But in spite of the "reforms" yearly listed in the "Annual 
Report," the following arraignment of Japan's policy in 
Korea continues true and unanswerable. It is from a lead- 
ing article in the "Shin Nippon," a Japanese newspaper, 
which had the courage to criticize the Japanese authorities 
in connection with the "Korean Conspiracy Case" : 

"Count Terauchi is trying by every means to crush the 
rising of the native Koreans against his administration, 
even at the expense of his countrymen's interest in the 
peninsula. His press censorship, espionage policy, and 
factory legislation were all due to his fear of a rising of 
the Koreans. . . . The Governor-General's desire is 
to make the peninsula one big fortress, and he seems to 
regard all those engaged in industrial or commercial 
work in Korea as mere camp followers within the walls 
of the barracks." 

It is also well to remember that "most of these reforms, 



84 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

valuable as they are, may be found in a well-regulated penal 
colony" (c) and that all of them have been effected or intro- 
duced at the expense of the Korean taxpayer in the interest 
and for the benefit of the Japanese Settler for whom the 
Japanese authorities desire to make Korea an attractive field 
of colonization. 

XVI. 
Anglo-Saxon Work in Asia. 

These are only a few of the ruthless facts featuring the 
work of Japan in Korea. In aim and spirit, as well as in 
methods, this work differs greatly from the labors of Anglo- 
Saxon workers in Asia. 

In India and Further India, the Englishman today rules in 
the interest of the native. He has committed mistakes, and, 
maybe, he still blunders. But he administers these great 
regions of Asia as a trust and in the spirit of a trustee. 

It is, however, in the Philippines that the work of the 
Anglo-Saxon as a trustee-nation is seen in terms unobscured 
by what may be called the ambiguities of imperialism. Here, 
the American has not been satisfied to work as a trustee for 
an indefinite period. He has educated the Filipino not only 
to assist but eventually to replace him in the government of 
the country. 

And late advices from Washington, D. C, indicate that the 
American is already viewing the independence of the Philip- 
pines as a necessary term of the international settlement 
which is to make the world safe for democracy. 

XVII. 
The Policy of the Prize-Pig. 

But in Korea, the Japanese rules and administers the 
country in the spirit and by the methods of a Master-Nation 
or, more accurate, a Profiteer-Nation. 

Except in the sense that cattle or slaves must be taken 



Cc) "The Korean Conspiracy Case," by Arthur Judson Brown, New 
York. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 85 

care if of they are to be of value to their owner, the wel- 
fare of the Korean people is not an aim of government with 
Japan. 

The "improvements" loudly advertised in the annual re- 
ports of the Korean Government-General are made either 
for the encouragement of Japanese settlers or in the interests 
of what may be truly described as the policy of the prize- 
pig, i. e., for much the same reason that a breeder fattens 
his pig for a show. 

XVIII. 
Japan Contra Mundum. 

In addition to these reasons connected directly with the 
fate of the Korean people, the vital interests of the world — 
particularly the Asiatic interests of France as well as the 
Asiatic and Pacific interests of Great Britain and the United 
States — demand the dis-annexation of Korea and the libera- 
tion of her people from Japan. 

Reference has already been made to Japan's envisagement 
of Christianity in Korea as an inimical force. And it is 
possible that the Mikado's advisers bethink themselves of 
the anti-Christian policy of Caesarian Rome. But the Caesars 
opposed Christianity as a religion and not — as in the case 
of Japan today — in the belief that it was a moral and in- 
tellectual force that challenged the subjection of an entire 
nation and its exploitation by the methods of a political 
slavery. 

In trade and commerce, Japan is gradually eliminating the 
Western trader and merchant in Korea and transferring to 
the exclusive hands of her own people a business which has 
had its origin in the series of treaties of peace and com- 
merce concluded between Korea and the Foreign Powers. 

In this elimination of Western competition Japan con- 
tinues true to that instinct for exclusion which, in the past, 
found expression in her rigidly guarded isolation and which 
today expresses itself, for instance, in the prohibition of 



86 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

foreign ownership of land in Japan and in the attempt to 
exclude foreign influence in Far Asia through the appHcation 
of a false Monroe Doctrine for the Far East. 

XIX. 
Japan's Continental Policy. 

It is, however, in the far-reaching political aims of Japan 
— realizable eventually through her continued annexation 
of Korea — that France as well as England and America 
must be vitally interested. 

The danger to the non-Japanese world, including espe- 
cially the three Latin and Anglo-Saxon powers, lies in 
Japan's unfettered prosecution of her continental policy. 

This policy aims, first, at the seizure of the hegemony of 
Asia through the domination and control of the man-power 
and the "natural resources" of China — possible only by the 
Japanese possession of the continental point d'appui of 
Korea — and, next, at the mastery of the Pacific Ocean as the 
sole means of forcing an entrance for Japanese Emigrants, 
into the rich lands of the Australias and the Pacific seaboard 
of the United States. 

XX. 
The Policy in Operation. 

The continental policy of Japan has already found its par- 
tial expression in the two successful wars waged by Japan 
against China in 1894-5 and against Russia in 1904-5 and In 
the annexation of Korea on August 22, 1910. 

The Japanese possession of Korea renders Chinese sov- 
ereignty in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia 
impossible. And with the eventual inclusion of these stra- 
tegic regions within the territorial framework of Japan's con- 
tinental policy, the military or the "pacific" conquest of the 
fat lands of China and 400,000,000 Chinese is inevitable. 

This is not the language of hypothesis or prophecy. It is 
a simple statement of the deliberately expressed intention 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 87 

and plan of the Japanese Government as set forth in the 
famous set of twenty-one demands which Tbkio presented 
to Peking on January 18, 1915, and secured in certain treaties 
and notes signed by the Chinese Government in compHance 
with an ultimatum threatening war (d). 

XXI. 
The Menace to France. 

The eventual domination of China — which the continued 
subjugation of Korea will enable Japan to secure — is a spe- 
cific menace to France as an Asiatic power. 

The subjugation of China to the military will of a war- 
organized state like Japan and the necessary entrenchment 
of the latter in the Chinese province of Yunnan, which 
abounds in tin and dominates the rear of I'lndo-Chine, must 
constitute an obviously political and "strategic" menace to the 
Asiatic dominions of France. And as the continued pos- 
session of these dominions by France is a vital element in 
the prestige and glory of the Third RepubUc as a world- 
power, the Quai d'Orsay must, of course, realize the signifi- 
cance of a Japanese hegemony in Asia which is based on 
the control and direction of Chinese man-power and re- 
sources by Japan. 

But the menace to France is not a mere "strategic deduc- 
tion." It is a political reality. Indeed, it is one of the three 
unavowed aims of Japan; and because it is rooted in re- 
vanche, the Japanese menace to France will continue an 
actual danger to the Third Republic. 

The Treaty of Shimonoseki. 

France's war-debt to Japan dates from the revision of the 
Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, when the Tokio Government 
was forced to agree to the retrocession to China of the 
Liaotung peninsula, including the great fortress of Port 



(d) The Chinese delegation to the Peace Conference are reported 
to be claiming the abrogation of these treaties and notes on the 
ground, inter alia, that they subject China to Japanese domination. 



88 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Arthur, whose cession "in perpetuity and full sovereignty" 
had been secured by Japan as one of the fruits of her vic- 
tory over China. 

Russia, Germany and France viewed the cession of the 
Liaotung peninsula as an act demanding their joint inter- 
vention and insisted on its cancellation and the withdrawal 
of Japan from the Asiatic mainland. 

Japan obeyed. But she instantly began to work for the 
reversal of the decree of the Triple Powers, since the pos- 
session of the Liaotung peninsula was a vital factor in the 
successful prosecution of her continental policy. It meant 
the possession of the threshold of Far Asia, with direct 
entrance into Manchuria and Korea. 

Not only the "necessities" of high policy, but the spirit 
of revenge spurred on Japan to the vast preparations which 
culminated in her victorious war with Russia in 1904-5 and 
regained her the coveted piece of Chinese territory. 

The outbreak of the war in 1914 gave her another oppor- 
tunity to work out her continental policy with its edge of 
revenge against Germany. Just as she had defeated Russia 
and supplanted her in South Manchuria so she next defeated 
Germany in Kiaochow and supplanted her in the Chinese 
province of Shantung. 

The "Ignominious Triple Interference.** 

It is significant that, while this triple intervention used to 
be ascribed — before the Russo-Japanese war — to the action 
of ''Russia^ Germany and France" and since that war, but 
before the ejection of Germany from Kiaochow — to the 
action of "Germany, France and Russia," the Japanese are 
now referring it to the action of "France, Germany and 
Russia." For instance, in a recent statement of "The Case 
for Japan," Baron Makino deemed it necessary to empha- 
size the fact that the retrocession of the Liaotung peninsula 
was due to the "force majeure" of a "protest from France, 
Germany and Russia." And Viscount Chinda, another of 
the Japanese Peace Delegates, has also considered it expe- 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 89 

dient to explain that his people regard the said intervention 
as an "ignominious triple interference" (e). These references 
may seem a little meticulous to the French mind; but they 
are big with meaning and m-cnace when you know the Jap- 
anese mind with its strange, subtle mode of working. 

And not the least important consideration in this connec- 
tion is the fact that a successful Japanese war with France 
might mean the extension of the territorial system of Japan 
to rindo-Chine which would bring Japan within swifter 
striking power of Middle Asia and those islands of the South 
Seas, regarded by responsible Japanese publicists as the 
"necessary tropical complement" of a Greater Japan, puis- 
sant and self-sufficing. 

XXII. 
The Mastery of the Pacific. 

Japan's continental policy menaces the Anglo-Saxon pow- 
ers just as much as it does France, if not more so. 

Japanese imperialists claim that Japan's yearly surplus 
population justifies the demand for territorial extension in- 
volved in her continental policy. And it is said that the 
"exportable margin" of her population must be sent to 
Korea, to South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia 
and the historic provinces of China. 

While the emigration of this "exportable margin" may 
become a serious question in about five more decades if the 
"Sexual Law" of the Jungle continues in operation in Japan, 
it appears that Japanese propaganda is deliberately exagger- 
ating the facts of the case in order to create a belief abroad 
that Japanese emigration is at once an economic and politi- 
cal necessity that demands immediate relief. 

According to Japanese political thought, this "immediate 
relief" must be secured through Japanese colonization in 
Korea and China and, if possible, through Japanese emi- 
gration to Australasia and America. 

(e) "Washington Star," February 20, 1919. 



90 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

But the Japanese know that they suffer from disabilities of 
physique and character which must prevent them from suc- 
cessfuly colonizing either Korea or China in the sense of 
finding a new home in either of these countries. 

Their insular and physiographical environment has de- 
veloped the Japanese into a physical type that cannot thrive 
on continental Asia and is unfitted, for instance, to with- 
stand the rigours of life on the wind-swept plains of Man- 
churia and Eastern Inner Mongolia. And the conditions of 
their island-existence have rendered it impossoble for the 
Japanese to live in tracts of country without that element of 
the picturesque which the sea and the volcanic origin of the 
islands of Japan have introduced into every Japanese land- 
scape. 

There are historic areas in China where, no doubt, the 
Japanese could live. But these "places in the sun" — as the 
Prussian teachers of Japan would call them — are and have 
been for centuries over-populated by the Chinese them- 
selves. 

It is, therefore, elsewhere than on the continent of Asia 
that Japan must send her "exportable margin" of population. 
And responsible Japanese publicists make no secret of the 
national desire for an outlet in the lands of promise lying in 
Australia and the United States. Thither, however, the 
Japanese may not go. But thither he is "determined" to go. 

And just as Japan "prepared" for the war against China 
and for the war against the Tsardom and was ready when 
fortune placed Germany within her power and is today 
"waiting" for the hour when France shall make amends for 
her participation in the "ignominious triple interference," so 
Japan is now engaged at the work of "preparation" which is 
to give complete expression to her continental policy, i. e., 
A colossal struggle with the Anglo-Saxon powers to end in 
the conversion of the Pacific into a "Japanese Lake" and 
the unrestricted entrance of the Japanese immigrant into 
Australasia and the United States. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 91 

A Policy of World-Conquest. 

A bold conception ... a thing of audacity; and, per- 
haps, the Anglo-Saxon may envisage it as a dream beyond 
man's attempt. But similar schemes of world conquest are 
not unknown in history; and the great war has revealed the 
harboring of a like scheme by the German mind. And let it 
be remembered that the rulers of Japan have organized her 
as a war-state after the Prussian type and that her conti- 
nental policy, that is, her POLICY OF WORLD-CON- 
QUEST, has already found expression: 

(a) in two successful wars which have made her the 
greatest military power in Asia in much the same way 
as Prussia's two wars made her the greatest military 
power in Europe; 

(b) in the annexation of Korea; 

(c) in the gradual substitution of Japanese for Chi- 
nese authority in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner 
Mongolia ; 

(d) in the attempt now being made to secure at the 
Peace Conference the succession of Japan to German 
holdings and privileges in the sacred Chinese province 
of Shantung, including Kiaochow; 

(e) in the growing subjection of China, with her in- 
calculable man-power and resources, to Japanese domi- 
nation by and through the same set of methods which 
made the annexation of Korea a "political necessity" ; and 

(/) in the Japanese possession of the "South Sea 
Islands north of the Equator," which brings JAPAN 
NEARLY TWO THOUSAND MILES CLOSER TO 
AUSTRALIA and gives the Japanese Navy a base which 
dominates the most strategic and important region of the 
Pacific. 

XXIII. 
The Japanese as the "Eternal Priestess" 

The Korean people and nation finally submit that the 



92 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

imposition of Japanese civilization on Korea (/) and its 
spread, through Japan's continental policy, in Asia and the 
regions of the Pacific are opposed to the interests of the 
world and to the moral progress of the human race. 

Japanese life is disfigured by its dangerous looseness of 
views regarding the relations of the s^xes. Impartial foreign 
investigators report that, while prostitution infests cities in 
the West, the vice infests cities and VILLAGES in Japan. 
It is not only the Government official and narikin (nouveau 
riche) who are clients of the geisha, but even the village 
schoolmaster. 

It has been estimated that Japan made, at one time, more 
out of her women engaged in prostitution abroad than out 
of her export of coal. This estimate was based on the fact 
that, v/hen a Japanese sells his daughter for service, he re- 
ceives Yen 250 per annum for three years. This sum is the 
equivalent of interest at 5% p.a. on a capital sum of 5,000 
Yen. And in pre-war days, there were in Irkutsk 110 Jap- 
anese houses of ill fame; and the Japanese as an "ETER- 
NAL PRIESTESS" was to be found in large numbers in 
every city in Eastern Siberia — in Habarovsk, Blagovest- 
chensk, Vladivostok. 

Today, a moderate estimate fixes the number of Japanese 
prostitutes in Manchuria at 10,000. It is calculated that the 
consular fees paid by these women cover the entire cost of 
the Japanese civil administration in the province, each having 
to pay a m.onthly sum of (Mexican) $3 to her consul. 

The Japanese prostitute is also to be found in every treaty 



(f) "Shortly after annexation the Japanese Government permitted 
Japanese agents to travel through the country selling morphia and 
developing the morphine habit among the Koreans. Then came pros- 
titutes. Today there are thousands of prostitutes brought over _ from 
Japan, who are inoculating Korean society with those terrible evils of 
social vice for which Japan as a :ace is almost proverbial. There are 
the public baths which the Japanese have instituted, where bathing is 
promiscuous. To Korean modesty and Korean standards of virtue this 
is a serious menace and will have on the growing generation far- 
reaching consequences. Between prostitution, public baths and 
gambling old Korean ideals stand in great peril." — From a recent 
pamphlet on the Korean Question by J. E. Moore, an American born 
in Korea. 



THE PEACE CONFERENCE. 93 

port in China, in Saigon and other places in I'lndo-Chine, 
in Bangkok and elsewhere in Siam, in Singapore — where one 
report states "there are streets of them" — in Penang and 
then on to India. Here the note o£ a British observer may 
be textually quoted: "Streets of Japanese prostitutes in 
Bombay and Kurrachee. Industry is thriving. They are 
only waiting the opportunity to push their way into Meso- 
potamia and challenge competition with the Armenians." 

She also flourishes in Borneo, Madagascar, Zanzibar, South 
Africa; and at one time the "monopoly of recognized prosti- 
tution round the coast of Australia was in the hands of the 
Japanese." 

"From Yunnan City to Urga." 

A concluding note must be added. It is a quotation from 
a striking article which appeared in a recent issue of the 
"North China Daily News," the leading British paper in the 
Far East. The facts disclosed in the article have com- 
pelled the Japanese Government through the Japanese Em- 
bassy in London to promise remedial action : 

"Everywhere Japanese prostitution, the systematic exten- 
sion of which from Yunnan City to Urga is such an inspir- 
ing evidence of our Asiatic allies, goes hand in hand with 
the sale of morphia. 

"Morphia, no longer purchasable in Europe, is manu- 
factured now in well-equipped laboratories in Japan and 
in Formosa. During recent years the bulk of the Persian 
opium coming into the market has been purchased by 
Japan for conversion into morphia, for Persian opium 
yields a larger percentage of morphia than Indian opium. 
Opium grown in Korea, the cultivation of which it is 
interesting to note followed immediately upon the closing 
of the opium shops in Shantung (by the Chinese authori- 
ties) — Japanese officials providing the seeds — is an ever- 
expanding source of the supply of morphia, and, it may 
be added, of opium required by the (Japanese) adminis- 
tration of Formosa." 



APPENDICES 



"THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE." 97 

No. 1. 
THE ANNEXATION OF KOREA 

The following treaty was signed at Seoul on August 22, 
1910: 

S.M. I'Empereur du Japon et S.M. I'Empereur de Coree, 
en vue des relations speciales et etroites entre leurs pays 
respectifs, desirant augmenter le bien-etre commun des deux 
nations et assurer la paix permanente en Extreme-Orient, et 
etant convaincues que ces buts pourront etre le mieux at- 
teints par I'annexion de la Coree a I'empire du Japon ont 
resolu de conclure un traite de cette annexion et ont nomme 
a cet effet pour leurs plenipotentiaries, savoir: 

S.M. I'Empereur du Japon, 

Le Vicomte Masakata Terauchi, son Resident general, et 

S.M. I'Empereur de Coree, 

Yen Wan Yong, son Ministre-president d'fitat, 

Lesquels, par suite des conferences et deliberations mutu- 
eiles, sont convenus des articles suivants : 

Article premier. — S.M. I'Empereur de Coree fait la ces- 
sion complete et permanente a S.M. I'Empereur du Japon de 
tours les droits de la souverainete sur la totalite de la Coree. 

Art. 2. — S.M. I'Empereur du Japon accepte la cession men- 
tionnee dans I'article precedent et consent a I'annexion com- 
plete de la Coree a I'empire du Japon. 

Art. 3. — S.M. I'Empereur du Japon accordera a LL. MM. 
I'Empereur et I'ex-Empereur et a S.A. le prince heritier de 
Coree et a leurs epouses et heritiers, des titres dignites et 
honneurs qui sont appropries a leurs rangs respectifs, et des 
dons annuels seront faits pour maintenir ces titres, dignites 
et honneurs. 

Art. 4. — S.M. I'Empereur du Japon accordera aussi des 
honneurs et traitements appropries aux membres de la 
maison imperiale de Coree et a leurs heritiers autres que 
ceux mentionnes dans I'article precedent; et des fonds neces- 
saires, pour maintenir ces honneurs et traitements leurs 
seront octroyes. 



98 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Art. 5. — S.M. TEmpereur du Japon conferera la prairie et 
des dons pecuniaires a ceux des Coreens qui, a cause de 
services meritoires, sont consideres dignes de ces recon- 
naissances speciales. 

Art. 6. — Par suite de I'annexion ci-dessus mentionnee, le 
gouvernement du Japon prend le gouvernement et I'adminis- 
tration de la Coree et s'engage a accorder I'entiere protec- 
tion aux personnes et proprietes des Coreens qui obeissent 
aux lois en vigueur en Coree et a accroitre le bien-etre de 
tous ces Coreens. 

Art. 7. — Le gouvernement du Japon, en tant que les 
circonstances le premettent, emploiera dans les services pub- 
lics du Japon en Coree, ceux des Coreens qui acceptent le 
nouveau regime loyalement et de bonne foi et y sont dument 
qualifies. 

Art. 8. — Le present traite ayant ete approuve par S.M. 
I'Empereur du Japonj et par S.M. I'Empereur de Coree, 
produira son effet a partir du jour de sa promulgation. 

En foi de quoi, etc. 

No. 2. 
"THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE" 

The following extracts are 'from a pamphlet entitled "The 
Korean Conspiracy Case," issued in New York on Novem- 
ber 20, 1912, as the "outcome of a conference of representa- 
tives of all the missionary organizations of the United States 
. . . conducting work in Korea with several eminent 
laymen . . . connected with these organizations and 
whose counsel was sought because their international repu- 
tation and their detachment from the missionary interests 
immediately involved fitted them to give dispassionate ad- 
vice." 

^ *l* *»* T* 

The interest of the civilized w6rld has been aroused by 
the difficulties that have developed in Korea and which 



"THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE." 99 

have culminated in the arrest, trial and conviction of a large 
number of Korean Christians on a charge of conspiring to 
assassinate Count Terauchi, the Governor General. The cir- 
cumstances raise some grave questions in which Western 
peoples are deeply concerned. It is true that from the view- 
point of international law and diplomatic intercourse these 
questions primarily relate to Japan's treatment of her own 
subjects; but it is also true that it may be said of nations, as 
of individuals, that "none of us liveth to himself." Man- 
kind has passed the stage where it is indifferent to what any 
government does to a subject race. 

^ *#* T* T* 

Evidences have been multiplying for more than a year that 
(the Japanese) military party is now in the saddle. Uni- 
formed gendarmes swarm in Korea, particularly in the north. 
Secret police are ubiquitous. Spies attend every meeting of 
Koreans. All organizations are suspected of revolutionary 
designs. We do not know that they had, but every country 
in Asia is honeycombed with guilds and societies of various 
kind, many of them more or less political. The Koreans 
would be lacking in the commonest elements of human 
nature if some of them might not have thought of doing 
what every subject people has done since the world began — 
take secret counsel as to how the yoke of the alien con- 
queror might be thrown off. 



From all political movements, however, the missionaries 
and the leading Korean Christians resolutely sought to keep 
the churches aloof. Obedience to the "powers that be" was 
preached from every pulpit. The church must have nothing 
to do with politics, the Christians were told. ... So 
strong was this determination of the Missionaries and 
Korean church leaders that it was not uncommon for 
Koreans outside the churches to taunt Christians with being 
on the side of the enemies of their country and for the 



100 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

missionaries to be told that if it were not for them, a revo- 
lution would have been started long ago. 

T* ^ ^ •*» 

The missionaries are the great men of Korea. While they 
cannot control the political activities of the hundreds of 
thousands of Korean Christians, they have used their great 
influence to induce the Koreans to acquiesce in the Japan- 
ese rule. Indeed, it has often been said that if it had not 
been for the missionaries, a revolution would have broken 
out when Korea was annexed to Japan. The Japanese fully 
appreciate this; but they are restive under a situation in 
which foreigners apparently have power to make or unmake 
a revolution among their own subjects. Japanese national 
pride demands Japanese supremacy within Japanese territory. 
A Japanese official who sees himself overshadowed by an 
American Missionary is more or less unconsciously jealous 
and is apt to feel that such pre-eminence is prejudicial to 
the interests of Japan and that it must be broken. 

* * * * 

In the fall of 1911 the Japanese suspicion of the churches 
began to find more open expression in the arrest of leading 
Korean Christians . . . many of the men and boys 
were kept in jail for months without food or clothing for 
the cold weather, without knowing the charges against them, 
and without being permitted to have legal counsel. Other 
arrests were made in other places until a considerable num- 
ber of Christians were in jail. . . . The number of ar- 
rested men that were sent from the provincial towns of 
Seoul . . . were said by the "Seoul Press" of April 
19, 1912, to have been 150. 

* * * * 

. the Japanese authorities announced that they had 
discovered a conspiracy, that the specific charge against the 
men and youths whom they had arrested was a participation 
in a plot to murder Governor General Terauchi, and that 
under preliminary police examination the accused men had 
"confessed" their guilt. The public trial began June 28, 



"THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE." 101 

1912, before the District Court of Seoul. . . . It is 
deeply to be regretted that the trial proved to be of such a 
character as to strengthen the grave fears regarding the 
methods of the Japanese. The methods of procedure impress 
a Western mind as peculiar. The lawyers for the defense 
were not permitted to confer with their clients until shortly 
before the public trial, months after the prosecution had 
prepared its case with freest secret access to the prisoners. 
When their lawyers were given permission to see them, the 
conversations were in the presence of a scowling police so 
that the sorely beset men could imagine what their jailers 
would do to them afterwards if anything was said that did 
not please them. The enormous voluminous records of the 
case were not made accessible to the counsel for the defense 
until it was too late to give them proper study or to verify 
the allegations of facts. In court, all questions were asked 
and witnesses examined through and at the option of the 
presiding Judge. The jury system has not reached Japan, 
and the whole course of trial showed that the judges had 
made up their minds before the trial and that they were in 
effect judges, jury and prosecuting attorneys combined. 
. . . As the trial proceeded the hostile and unprejudicial 
attitude of the court became more and more apparent. In- 
numerable questions by the judges were clearly intended to 
be traps for the men whom they were trying. When one 
of the pastors was tripped in a slight verbal inaccuracy, the 
presiding judge loudly called him "a lying Jesus doctrine 
pastor" and peremptorily dismissed him. At this the whole 
court laughed heartily. . . . 

Finally, the perversion of justice became so gross that on 
July 17th, the counsel for the defense boldly refused to pro- 
ceed and announced that they "felt it proper to state their 
opinion that the trial was not being conducted in a regular 
manner and in accordance with Art. 41 in the Code of Crim- 
inal Procedure, for the honour of the Imperial Judiciary 
and with a view to the full defense of the accused," and 
they therefore applied for the unseating of the Chief Judge 



102 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

Tsukahara and his colleagues and for a new trial under 
different judges. The court announced a suspension of the 
trial, pending appeal to a higher court for the assignment 
of other judges. The appeal was overruled, and after some 
delay, the trial was resumed August 23rd, but was brought 
to a close in the unexpectedly short period of four days. 
The judges reserved their decision till September 28th when 
they sentenced 105 of the defendants to terms of imprison- 
ment — 6 for ten years, 18 for seven years, 39 for six years, 
42 for five years. . . . Among those who received the 
ten-year sentence was Baron Yun Chi Ho, President of the 
Southern Methodist College at Songdo and Vice-President 
of the Korean Y. M. C A. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE PASSING OF KOREA— An excellently illustrated 
work, giving a thorough understanding of the Korean peo- 
ple, their life, literature, customs and oppression under the 
Japanese rule. By Homer B. Hulhert. 

THE FAR EAST— Has a portion devoted to Korea, giv- 
ing many interesting facts about the country and people. 
By Archibald Little. 

*THE STORY OF KOREA— An illustrated volume on 
the life, customs and Japanese achievements in the pen- 
insula. By Joseph Henry Longford. 

KOREA AND HER NEIGHBORS— A work depicting 
the life and customs in Korea during the latter part of the 
last century. By Isabella Lucy Bishop. 

*IN KOREA WITH MARQUIS ITO— A tale of Korea 
during the rule of Marquis Ito, with an appreciation for the 
Japanese administration. By George Trumbull Ladd. 

*KOREA — A comprehensive review of the history, 
people and commerce written through the courtesy of Jap- 
anese officials. By Augustus Hamilton. 

A CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF HISTORICAL 
EVENTS — A chronological index of some of the chief 
events in the foreign intercourse of Korea from the begin- 
ning of the Christian era to the twentieth century. By 
Horace N. Allen. 

COREA, THE HERMIT NATION— A volume of 
merit dealing with the people and customs. By William 
Elliot Griffis. 

*THE JAPANESE EMPIRE— Contains a number of 
chapters giving a condensed review of Korea as a province 
of the Japanese Empire. By Joseph Dautremier. 

TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS— A volume gotten 
out under the auspices of the United States Government, 
reviewing the treaties and conventions between the United 



104 THE TRUTH ABOUT KOREA. 

States and China and Korea. By William Woodville Rock- 
hill. 

KOREAN TREATIES— The most important documents 
negotiated between Korea and the great powers. By Henry 
Chung. 

THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE— A review of 
the famous Conspiracy Case of 1912. By Arthur Judson 
Brown. 

KOREAN COMMERCE— A United States Government 
publication published by the Department of Commerce and 
Labor. 

*THE JAPANESE YEAR BOOK FOR 1916— Has a 
number of pages devoted to statistical information about 
Korea or "Chosen." 

*OFFICIAL GUIDE TO EASTERN ASIA, vol. 1— A 

traveler's guide giving much general information, maps, etc., 
and prepared by the Imperial Japanese Government Rail- 
ways. 

*RESULTS OF THREE YEARS' ADMINISTRA- 
TION OF CHOSEN— A Japanese Government publica- 
tion, showing the progress in Korea during the first three 
years after Japanese annexation. 

*ANNUAL REPORTS AND REFORMS AND 
PROGRESS IN CHOSEN— A well-illustrated Japanese 
Government publication enumerating the achievements of 
Japanese rule in Korea. 

PAMPHLETS: Japanese Diplomacy and Force in 
Korea, by Arthur MacLennon; Korea's Appeal for Self- 
Determination, by /. E. Moore; Independence for Korea. 



*Books marked with an asterisk are either a part of Japanese Gov- 
ernment propaganda or show pro-Japanese influence. 



